The most abstract are the earliest, and Austen’s novels, published from 1811 to 1818, fit right in. The vertical dimension is intriguing, though. The bottom is associated with Macbeth-ish words like banquet, beheld, slain, sword and thee. Scott’s medieval romp “Ivanhoe” (1820) lands at the bottom.

But what about the top, where Austen is nearly alone, with “Diary of a Nobody” (1892) and “New Grub Street” (1891)? This is related to a higher-than-average propensity for words like quite, really and very — the sort that writers are urged to avoid if they want muscular prose. It also connects to time markers and states of mind: always, fortnight and week; awkward, decided, dislike, glad, sorry, suppose.

No “splendid scenes of an imaginary world,” then. But as Virginia Woolf observed about Austen, “Of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.” To capture that “correct and striking representation” of which Scott spoke, we need more data.

Another study analyzed words in Austen’s novels, comparing them with a collection of contemporary British fiction, and of British fiction from 1780 to 1820. It found several distinctive aspects.

Austen uses comparatively more words referring to women — “she,” “her,” “Miss” — and to family relationships like “sister,” unsurprising considering her subject matter. We also see more words like “content,” “respected,” “expected.” This corresponds with our chart’s horizontal axis.

Austen used intensifying words — like very, much, so — at a higher rate than other writers. The study linked this intensifier use to a crucial trait of her writing, one that might at first seem to resist quantification: irony.

Traditional literary approaches to Austen have long focused on this aspect of her work: “the incongruities between pretence and essence, between the large idea and the inadequate ego,” as the critic Marvin Mudrick put it. A look at passages where words like very are used frequently often finds the stated meaning conceivably at odds with the real one, the exaggeration subtly inviting doubt.