Google NGram viewer taps 500 billion words to uncover cultural trends

English: A graph showing the frequency of semi...
English: A graph showing the frequency of semicolon use in English between 1500 and 2008. Data is from the Google Books corpus. The graph was created using the Google Books Ngram Viewer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 500 Billion Words, a New Window on Culture – NYTimes.com.