Word Cloud Fun With Wordle
Wordle describes itself as a “toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide.” Words are arranged in random colors and patterns to create interesting designs that you can print or share with others. While playing around with Wordle is fun, you can also use it as a tool for improving your writing.
While the words that appear in a word cloud are arranged randomly, their size is determined by the frequency in which they appear throughout your text. The more often you use a word, the larger it appears. This allows you to visually identify the words you are using most frequently and, perhaps, too often in your writing.
When you are writing, you want to avoid repetition, except when used for effect, and keep words flowing in a balanced way. A word cloud is a great visual identifier to show how well you are maintaining that balance within your text. Sometimes, a large word will grab your attention–and not in a good way–because you never realized how frequently it was finding its way into your writing.
As an example, I entered an article I had written and the word that appeared largest was “just.” I never realized how often I had been using the word. Without Wordle, I might have never noticed it at all. Since then, I have paid closer attention to my use of the word in my writing, and have tried to reduce its usage as much as possible. Doing so has helped me improve my writing by forcing me to think of alternative ways of expressing myself.
Of course, if you are writing with keywords in mind, you’ll want your keywords to appear larger than everything else. The word cloud can also serve to show you if your writing is too saturated with keywords. If the words are excessively large in comparison to the rest of the text, then you might be forcing them in with too great a frequency. Reducing their usage may improve the readability of your text for your readers.
Don’t just look at Wordle as another useless toy, but consider it as a visual tool to help you improve your writing. You might be surprised at the words you’re using too frequently!
Dan C. Rinnert is a writer on a variety of topics and can frequently be found blogging at dcrBlogs.com
This post was written by: Erin
Tags: online word games, word art, word clouds, wordle