The Virginia Quarterly Review probably gets about 10 billion submissions every year. On the VQR blog recently, they listed the most common titles among submissions they receive:

1. Remember
2. Smoke
3. Revelation
4. Work
5. Grace
6. Waiting
7. Insomnia
8. Voyeur
9. Butterfly
10. Reunion

Remember, Grace, and Imsomnia are pretty standard (read:boring), I think, but the popularity of Voyeur and Butterfly took me by surprise. I wonder what percent of the total volume of submissions uses one of these titles, and I’m curious about the distribution curve for words per title. Is the one-word title really that popular? What’s the fixation?