Item — HN Reader

"So Many" == "27 times in American legal decision"

And half of these 27 'don’t engage with her work beyond the first line of Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife."'

And from some of the examples given, the author includes cases that merely use the phrase "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." followed by whatever the judge is arguing.

So in fact very few judges have used a phrase that is now very much within common usage in English, and which has obvious appeal in legal arguments.

The article then rambles on about Austen and gender and law with no apparent point, argument, or goal.

Nice idea, but looks like the data didn't back up the point the author wanted to make so they just dumped the words out anyway.

You sewed it up! Excellent comment.

Statbait blogging is so irritating, and I see it all the time, where some seemingly interesting observation is twisted by someone's pet data mining project to support a crappy blog article.

> So in fact very few judges have used a phrase that is now very much within common usage in English, and which has obvious appeal in legal arguments.

Actually, it appears that they only counted uses of the phrase that were footnoted with a reference to the Austen text.

But I agree with your overall point about the article.