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Stephen King once said that wannabe authors should avoid using adverbs which end with ‘ly’ but does he follow his own advice? Data journalist Ben Blatt decided to find out. He also analysed texts written by some of the best known authors to discover the words they use obsessively, and why. Elmore Leonard whose book inspired the film Jackie Brown loved exclamation marks, while Vladimir Nabokov who wrote Lolita was keen on the colour ‘mauve.’

Presenter: Tim Harford

(Photo: American novelist Ernest Hemingway in 1954 on safari in Africa. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)