Ritter was the first to write a book on the stylistic method and its use in determining the chronology of the dialogues. All previous investigations were either articles in periodicals or parts of theses and other works on Plato of a general character. Not only was it the first book, but also the largest collection of linguistic data up till that time.

His main inquiry, as mentioned in the chapter on Siebeck, was into answer formulae, but in addition to this he investigated the use of well over a hundred expressions of different kinds, though many of these turned out to be of no value for chronological purposes, and he did not therefore trouble to publish the actual statistics. As the number of facts presented is so large, the best arrangement will be to reverse Ritter's procedure of discussing the individual items and finally reproducing them all in statistical tables; that is to say, to give these tables first (pp. 58–62) and leave the examination of their results till afterwards. The first table contains the reply formulae, the second other expressions which Ritter believed to be chronologically noteworthy. In the latter are also included the phrases and words which were investigated by Ritter's two most important predecessors, Dittenberger and Schanz.

The first question is whether the statistics are accurate or not. As in the case of Siebeck, answering it is rather difficult, only this time it is not so much the problem of classifying the reply formulae into three acceptable groups, but of deciding the exact constitution and limit of each formula to be counted.