Word-Cloud Making for the Masses

By JOSHUA CONDON

Ever heard of Wordle?

It’s a word-cloud generator site, and it’s endlessly entertaining. It uses the text you type (or copy and paste) into a basic dialog box to create a poster-worthy, weighted visual representation — meaning the more a word is used, the bigger it appears on the page.

You can play tweak-the-design incessantly — choose the maximum number of words shown, change fonts and color schemes, or decide whether the words appear more horizontally or vertically — but aesthetic appeal aside, I also like to use it as a sort of ambient information tool. I made a word cloud of my résumé, for example, to see the big-picture view of which words and themes come across. Mostly, it came out as expected, though there were some surprises (how could I possibly have used the word “request” so many times that it’s as big as it is?). You can do the same with a cover letter or presentation, or just have fun with some White Stripes lyrics.

Or you can mix art and commerce, like a friend of mine who made a word cloud of his business plan and liked it so much he decided to use it as the cover sheet for the document itself. So Wordle isn’t just entertaining — it’s also kind of useful.



Create your own.  http://www.wordle.net/create 

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/word-cloud-making-for-the-masses/

A comparison of how often speakers at the two presidential nominating conventions used different words and phrases, based on an analysis of transcripts from the Federal News Service.

 
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/06/us/politics/convention-word-counts.html?ref=politics