Dataset

Multilingual stylometry word lists (en, ja, fr, es, de)

This dataset is the per-language list of function words, hedges, boosters and attitude markers MyWritingTwin uses for stylometric analysis, covering English, Japanese, French, Spanish and German.

Stylometric methods transfer across languages; their word lists do not. A hedge in Japanese is not a translation of a hedge in English, and a function-word list built by translating English stopwords produces a measurement that is wrong in a way nothing downstream can detect.

The table below is generated at build time from the list this site actually runs on, so the counts cannot drift from the code. The lists are curated from published frequency work per language rather than machine-translated from English.

LanguageFunction wordsHedgesBoostersAttitude markersTotal
English70212014125
Japanese2918171478
French4618171596
Spanish4317171693
German5017161295
All languages238918771487
Entries per language and category, generated from the running analyser

Method notes

  • Counts are generated from lib/stylometry-words.ts at build time, so this page and the running analyser cannot disagree.
  • Category definitions: function words are grammatical words chosen unconsciously; hedges soften a claim; boosters strengthen one; attitude markers signal the writer's stance toward the content.

Frequently asked questions

How many words are in MyWritingTwin's stylometry lists?
487 entries across five languages as of 2026-09-15, split into function words, hedges, boosters and attitude markers. English carries the largest function-word list at 70 entries; the per-language breakdown is in the table above.
Why not translate the English list into the other languages?
Because the categories are not translation-equivalent. Japanese hedging works through sentence-final expressions with no English counterpart, and French and German function words partition the grammar differently. A translated list measures the wrong thing consistently.
Can I cite or reuse this dataset?
Yes. Cite it as the MyWritingTwin multilingual stylometry word lists with the date shown at the foot of this page, since the lists are versioned with the codebase and can change.

Read further

Sources and how to cite this page

Cite this page

MyWritingTwin. “Multilingual stylometry word lists (en, ja, fr, es, de).” Last updated 2026-09-15. https://www.mywritingtwin.com/reference/stylometry-word-lists