Words Explorer

Count words in legislation

Getting the most from the Words Explorer

The Words Explorer tool allows you to interrogate legislation by entering a word or sequence of words to see how frequently they occur over time. Identifying when words and phrases are used, how often and what usage trends are can provide insights into changing styles of drafting.

How does the Words Explorer work?

N-Grams dataset

We have created a new legislation dataset of N-grams data for legislation. N-Grams data is about words or sequences of words and their frequency of occurrence.

We have counted every single word in the statute book to create the core N-Grams dataset. We have also counted every two word, three word, four word and five word combination across the statute book to create additional N-Gram datasets that allow you to search for phrases, such as "for the purposes of" or "Secretary of State". The N-Grams dataset uses the text of enacted legislation. This means that your search includes all amendments without duplication. If the N-Grams dataset used revised versions of legislation, amendment words would be counted twice i.e. in the amending and amended legislation.

The default scope of the N-Grams dataset is All UK legislation (excluding originating from the EU), although you can pick different legislation types from the drop down menu. The source of the data is legislation.gov.uk. For some legislation types, the data is complete. For others it is partial. To find out more, visit What data is available? | Research Legislation

For both the 'Find words in content' and 'Count words in legislation', simply put the word or phrase you are interested into the search box, and then press 'search'.

What is the graph showing me? 

The graph shows you the average frequency of the N-Grams (i.e. the words or phrases you are looking for) across the whole corpus of documents you have selected (the legislation type and date ranges). The bottom axis shows the date range you have chosen and the vertical axis shows the frequency of occurrence. Where the line is greater than one, it shows the N-Gram occurs more frequently than the average N-Gram in the average year. So, for example, if your graph shows a count of 68 in the year 2012, this means that the word or phrase you selected appeared 68 times more frequently in 2012 than the average N-Gram in the average year. N-Grams are therefore very useful for showing trends.

Query Examples

Some example queries to get you started...

Click on the following links to see what query appears in the words explorer and the corresponding results.

Gender Neutrality

Discover how pronouns have been used in legislation.

she, he, they

Does it support understanding?

Look at frequency of occurrence (and location) of phrases to investigate terms that do not support understanding.

relevant/appropriate person

What data is available?

Legislation.gov.uk carries most (but not all) types of legislation and their accompanying explanatory documents. All primary legislation from 1988 and all secondary legislation from 1987 is available on the website, along with legislation originating from the EU. The ‘Help’ page provides more information on the extent and limitations of the data that is available.

Find out more about our data sets

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