the problem is is that

[Lynne Murphy]

Someone just wrote (and I deleted too soon!) that 'the problem is is that'
gets 700 hits on (I think) Altavista.  I tried using Altavista for exact
word matches a while ago and found that even though I'd put the words into
quote marks, it still ignored the words that are not supposed to 'count' in
a search, like 'the' and 'is'.  I wrote to them complaining about this, so
maybe it's fixed, but I'd be cautious about trusting that number with out
checking the websites it's 'hitting'--especially the ones that are lower on
the list.

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320