Quantitative data and graphics on lexical specificity and index readability: the case of Wikipedia

Abstract

This paper is part of a wider corpus based study focused on Web encyclopedias (Elia 2008). It is built on and extends the comparative analysis of Emigh and Herring (2005). In particular, attention is focused on the English edition of Wikipedia. A quantitative analysis compares Wikipedia vs. Britannica encyclopedic entries. Linguistic features such as type/token ratio, word and sentence length, and Index of Readability are analyzed. The findings show to what extent collaboratively produced Wikipedia entries are readable and standardized in a way not very dissimilar from those produced by experts in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.