Ways of using the BNC

BNC and concordance tools
Many users want to search the corpus for words or phrases using a concordance tool.

The corpus texts are in XML format and can be used with various software applications that can handle that format, or tools that work with plain text files. Worth noting is that unless you use a tool that can interpret the markup, you may not be able to, for example, define a search that retrieves instances of a word spoken by a woman, something occurring in a book, or a phrase found in a certain domain.

BNC online services
The BNC can also be searched online. The BNC Simple Search is a free online service which allows users to search the full BNC World corpus and see the frequency of the search term and up to 50 randomly selected instances. To use the service, simply go to the BNC start page and type your search string into the search box. More information is also available in the Simple Search section.

Other BNC services
Other ways to search the BNC online are offered through various external sites (listed here). These are not affiliated with the BNC Consortium but have permission to provide limited access to the corpus under certain conditions. [more information and links]

Other BNC resources
Different kinds of frequency lists for the BNC have been produced and some are being made available by the creators. [more information and links]

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