The year in review: 2025

Thanks to all of you for making 2025 another busy and productive one at IDEA! Here are some highlights from the past year:

• The site continues to attract a huge number of visitors from around the world. The archive saw roughly 2.5 million hits (page views) from about 1 million visits in 2025.
• We published 38 new samples. That’s 14 more than last year and eight more than 2023. In fact, that’s more than any year since 2021. IDEA has now surpassed 1,800 samples (including Special Collections).
• Videos were introduced to IDEA. This new feature, which showcases people reading Comma Gets a Cure, will surely help visual learners. Go here to watch and learn how you can contribute a video.
• Speaking of videos, we created a video guide to the submissions process, making it easier than ever to submit a sample.
• Our 2025 subjects represent 11 nations: Australia (which saw its 50th sample), China, Colombia, England, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Scotland, Thailand, United States, and New Zealand, whose subjects doubled thanks to Senior Editor David Nevell.
• Nine U.S. states are represented by our 2025 subjects, including Delaware – IDEA’s 50th state! The other states with new subjects this year are Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Montana, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.
• IDEA continues to rely heavily on our editors. In addition to the aforementioned Senior Editor David Nevell, we’d like to commend Senior Editor Deric McNish and his students for contributing several valuable samples. We also congratulate Ivan Masterov, who became our latest senior editor, with his 30th submission. Other editors contributing this year are senior editors Tanera Marshall and Sarah Nichols; Associate Editor Rhea Dowden; Executive Editor Cameron Meier; and me, Paul Meier.
• My podcast, In a Manner of Speaking, entered its eight year and featured IDEA senior editors Tanera Marshall and Sarah Nichols on the May and June episodes, respectively. (IDEA Executive Editor Cameron Meier, the podcast’s co-producer, served as co-host for those May and June episodes.) A favorite feature is the “Guess that Accent” quiz, in which listeners are challenged to identify a brief extract from an IDEA sample. The podcast is currently on hiatus, but you can listen to (and watch) a retrospective here.
• Our September fund drive prompted generous donations from several first-time donors. Our deepest thanks to all who gave. As is typical of such drives, the percentage of users contributing was very low: just 0.000016%. It’s never too late, of course, to support IDEA, the free research resource you have come to value. The Support IDEA button is a permanent fixture on the site. If you can’t donate monetarily, contributing samples or simply sharing IDEA’s posts on social media or following IDEA on Facebook and X is immensely helpful!
• We continued to expand our cultural, geographic, and ethnic diversity. While the website will always focus on English (it’s in our name, after all), we strongly encourage all ESL speakers to speak not just in English but also in their first language on their IDEA submission. This doubles the value and cultural representation of IDEA, as IDEA visitors can hear not just the subjects’ English-language accent but their native-language dialect too! See our Wish List to find out our top priorities.
• To get all the IDEA news from the past year, check out our What’s New posts.
• Finally, a huge thank-you to Cameron, our executive editor, who now does all the daily site maintenance and editing of new samples. You can see his love of the work on every page. We were all very lucky when Cameron came on board to helm the website.

Happy New Year to all our IDEA friends!