The following article by Chris Tribble discusses the uses of changing word patterns over the years in the (Manchester) Guardian Weekly.

What was what, who is who?

For anyone who writes a regular column, the turn of the year is not the festive season, it's the list season. Fortunately, computers are good at making lists, and using the Wordsmith Tools program I've been able to put together top 50s of key words and phrases that have differentiated 2007 from the previous 10 years of usage in the Guardian Weekly.

I've ended with four lists: people, places, politics and social change.

The people who stood out in 2007 were there for good and bad reasons. There were those newly in power - Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Miliband; the challengers of those in power - David Cameron, Ségolène Royal and Barack Obama; lords in trouble - Lord Levy (cash for honours), Lord Browne (scandal at BP); and those at the centre of affairs in regional conflicts - General David Petraeus, Nuri al-Maliki, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, General Musharraf, the former Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Benazir Bhutto, assassinated at the very end of the year.

The places of 2007 were the US, Britain, Iraq and Iran, followed by Darfur, Somalia and Mogadishu. Less expected were listings for Dubai, emerging as a commercial, tourism and artistic centre; Katine (in Uganda) reporting innovative work on HIV and Aids; and Ain al-Hilweh (a besieged refugee camp in Lebanon).

In politics the phrase "cash for honours" headed the list for UK news, followed by anti-war, counter-terrorism and African Union, with Hamas, Sunni and Shia still there as reminders of themes that have dominated the 21st century so far.

In social change the list was topped by climate change (global warming, carbon emissions, polar bears, carbon footprint); private equity signalled something about economic trends, and some three-word phrases indicated emerging themes: Russian intelligence officers (a new cold war?), join a gang (gun crime and violent culture in Britain), and without internet, as in: "Without the internet I would die," the reported comment of a student isolated in the West Bank. Maybe there is, after all, something that unites more and more of us.