<anchor xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xml:id="id_docs-internal-guid-68b34743-f5cf-6193-7f0a-062338eea011" />Figure 2 shows the ratio of direct speech in German novels from 1800 till 1900 based on the texts from Corpus <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" rend="italic">PD</hi>. The regression line indicates a decline of direct speech over time; at the same time, we can observe a decrease of variance. The strong variations between certain years, especially in the early 19th century, are caused by low numbers of provided texts (see Fig. 3). For instance, the peak in 1805 can be explained by the first publication of Denis Diderots ”Herrn Rameaus Neffe”, a philosophical dialogue-based novel.