The following article by Chris Tribble discusses the uses of words associated with 2008 compared with previous years in the (Manchester) Guardian Weekly.

Don't look back

Last year is not going to go down as one of my happier years, and it's been horrible for many. Using the key words program, Wordsmith Tools, it is possible to see which words were most statistically prominent in the Guardian Weekly archive for 2008 compared with preceding years. I've looked at the top 10 people, places and topics that have emerged in 2008.

The people list is topped by Barrack Obama (about to come into high office); Dmitry Medvedev, Raila Odinga, George Brown and David Milliband (newly in office); John McCain and Sarah Palin (who didn't make it); Moi Kibaki and Morgan Tsvangirai (struggling to keep or gain power); and one person who lost her life in the fight for high office: Benazir Bhutto.

The top 10 places have either been involved in wars, political struggle or ecological disaster: Georgia, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Russia, Tibet, Kenya, Somalia and Burma; or financial melt down: Iceland. The one city that made it into the top 100 key words for 2008 was Mumbai. The exception this year has been China, which received a large volume of good coverage following its hugely successful Olympics.

The 2008 top 10 themes included political words MDC (Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change); environment words: climate, energy, carbon, water and biofuels and, yes, Olympics. The green theme has been strong, with an emphasis on renewable, atomic, nuclear, solar, clean and wind.

However, it was the world of economics that produced the dominant story for the year. Along with prices the 2008 key words list contained: crunch, mortgage, credit, recession, financial and banks. The word prices offers a good example of the volatility and confusion that seems to have typified the past year. Not only have food, oil, house, fuel and commodity prices been in the news, but they've also been high, falling, rising, up, down, record and doubled.

So no surprises? Yes if we cast our minds back to the top 10 overall key words of 2007: Sarkozy, Musharraf, Fatah, Brown, Iraq, Hamas, Iran, Blackwater, Shia and Bhutto. One or two old friends, but isn't it strange how rapidly the agenda can shift?