206
shell, grep, tr, grep, sort, uniq, sort, head, perl
~ % wc -c wfg
209 wfg
~ % cat wfg
egrep -oi \\b[a-z]+|tr A-Z a-z|egrep -wv 'the|and|of|to|a|i|it|in|or|is'|sort|uniq -c|sort -nr|head -22|perl -lape'($f,$w)=@F;$.>1or($q,$x)=($f,76-length$w);$b="_"x($f/$q*$x);$_="|$b| $w ";$.>1or$_=" $b\n$_"'
~ % # usage:
~ % sh wfg < 11.txt
hm, just seen above: sort -nr
-> sort -n
and then head
-> tail
=> 208 :)
update2: erm, of course the above is silly, as it will be reversed then. So, 209.
update3: optimized the exclusion regexp -> 206
egrep -oi \\b[a-z]+|tr A-Z a-z|egrep -wv 'the|and|o[fr]|to|a|i[tns]?'|sort|uniq -c|sort -nr|head -22|perl -lape'($f,$w)=@F;$.>1or($q,$x)=($f,76-length$w);$b="_"x($f/$q*$x);$_="|$b| $w ";$.>1or$_=" $b\n$_"'
for fun, here's a perl-only version (much faster):
~ % wc -c pgolf
204 pgolf
~ % cat pgolf
perl -lne'$1=~/^(the|and|o[fr]|to|.|i[tns])$/i||$f{lc$1}++while/\b([a-z]+)/gi}{@w=(sort{$f{$b}<=>$f{$a}}keys%f)[0..21];$Q=$f{$_=$w[0]};$B=76-y///c;print" "."_"x$B;print"|"."_"x($B*$f{$_}/$Q)."| $_"for@w'
~ % # usage:
~ % sh pgolf < 11.txt