Fractality of informativity in 300 years of English scientific writing

AbstractScientific writing is assumed to have become more informationally dense over time (Halliday, 1988; Biber and Gray, 2016). By means of fractal analysis, we study whether over time the degree of informativity has become more persistent with predictable patterns of gradual changes between high vs. low informational content, indicating a trend towards an optimal code for scientific communication.