What strategy helps differentiate signs of language change from an individual author's style?

• A. Look for a single author's stylistic choices.
• B. Look for patterns confined to one text.
• C. Focus on surface punctuation alone.
• D. Look for broad, recurrent patterns across multiple texts and time periods.

Answer: (D)

The main idea here is to distinguish genuine language change from an individual writer’s personal style. To show that a shift is part of the language itself, you need patterns that appear beyond one author or one text—across many texts and across different time periods. When the same features recur widely, that signals a broader change in how language is used, rather than just a single writer’s idiolect. So the best approach is to look for broad, recurrent patterns across multiple texts and time periods. Focusing on a single author, or patterns limited to one text, or only surface punctuation, would not reliably indicate language change because they reflect individual choices or narrow contexts rather than systemic shifts.