Tell me more ×
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote -1 down vote favorite

First of all, I am really sorry if this topic does not fit here. I need to do an English sentences analysis, so I need to create a database. I need to find and input many English sentences into a program. Therefore, I need to find GOOD sources to copy from.

  1. I do NOT want anything like the newspaper style because it always has speaking language style, like "someone said:""".

  2. If I can directly copy from a source without too many modification, then it is preferred. I don't want to copy something from CNN because their website has too many HTML styles. It makes the sentences cut into many pieces.

share|improve this question
1  
I disagree with Point #1. While some newspapers are indeed peppered with the style you indicate, many are not, and some are excellently written. I just checked an article from the Wall Street Journal. It had nearly 900 words and more than 20 paragraphs; the word said appears just six times, and only three of those are direct quotes, the others being something more like: "The government of Valencia said Friday it intends to tap a fund with up to €18 billion that Spain's central government launched last week for regional governments that are unable to refinance debt." – J.R. Jul 21 '12 at 9:16

closed as off topic by Daniel δ, FumbleFingers, cornbread ninja 麵包忍者, Carlo_R., Andrew Leach Jul 21 '12 at 10:10

Questions on English Language & Usage Stack Exchange are expected to relate to English language and usage within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You are looking for a corpus of written/spoken English.

I don't generally like RTFG-type answers, but if you search for corpus on Wikipedia you will find links to many, many fine examples, many of which are free. You can also try the Google N-Grams project for access to decades of parsed speech.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Another source of non-spoken English is scholarly papers. Wikipedia has a list of free and non-free databases at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Take a look at these sites

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/

http://www.goenglish.me/

excuse me i wanted to post more sites but because of being new site didn't let me to post more that 2 hyperlink.

share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.