Abstract: This invention uses linguistic principles, which together can be called Collocational Cohesion (CC), to evaluate and sort documents automatically into one or more user-defined categories, with a specified level of precision and recall. Human readers are not required to review all of the documents in a collection, so this invention can save time and money for any manner of large-scale document processing, including legal discovery, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, creation and review of archives, and maintenance and monitoring of electronic and other communications. Categories for evaluation are user-defined, not pre-set, so that users can adopt either traditional categories (such as different business activities) or custom, highly specific categories (such as perceived risks or sensitive matters or topics).