Weekly Writing Tip
Word Choice
Investigating "Natural" English: Internet concordance
If anyone has ever said to you, "Native speakers of English don't usually say that," or "This word combination sounds awkward," an internet concordance may help you. A concordance is a kind of search engine. When you enter a word, it lists the most frequent uses of that word from newspapers, books, or spoken language. For example, below is an entry of the concordance for "play." By carefully reading the words before and after "play," you can see that "play" can be used as a compound noun ("play-off"), as a regular noun ("As the play unfolds..."), as an intransitive verb that is preceded by the preposition "to" ("to play the guitar") or as a transitive verb meaning "acts" (disturbances play in the genesis).
If you want to see how a specific word is used or the words or phrases that tend to come before or after it, we recommend this concordance: http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html