WORD CLOUDS are weighted visual representations of text. While it may be fun to turn a book or blog into one, word clouds can also help writers gain insights on word choice and keyword prevalence. I’ve included links to 5 sites for creating word clouds and an example cloud from each.
Most word cloud generators automatically eliminate function words and numbers. I often find they provide a quick way of gauging whether or strong verbs and adjectives versus too many weak verbs and annoying adverbs. The potential application for vocabulary development with students and language learners is manifold.
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Wordle: This is widely popular and has been around for a long time. The clouds can be opened in a new window, printed, or saved to the public gallery. To save the image, take screen shot and then paste it into a photo program for further editing. The randomize effect makes it quick and painless to arrive at a satisfactory word cloud.
I Don’t Believe God Wrote the Bible: A forthcoming travel memoir by Gerald Freeman critiqued and copy edited by me.
Tagexedo: This site is a bit more sophisticated and allows users to choose various shapes to apply to their word clouds. It also allows for a wide array of file sizes and types to be saved. Users can even purchase items like T-shirts and coffee mugs to display their masterpieces. The site includes a great slideshow of 101 Ways to Use Tagxedo.
Stealing Time: A time travel thriller by KJ Waters copy edited by me (and my longest project to date).
WordItOut: Similar to Wordle, but I found the means for downloading images to not be ideal. On the other hand, it allows the user to pick a point on the picture to set a new target that the text will all center around. This is helpful when it comes to leaving space on either side for other info or even book covers.
Fogged Up Fairy Tale: A chick-lit detective story critiqued and proofread by me.
Tagul: Similar to Tagexedo. The process stuck me as very user-friendly and I really liked the way each work in the cloud appeared in a table for better manipulation. Users need to sign in using one of their social media accounts.
Claudia Must Die: A novella thriller by T. B. Markinson which I proofread and wrote the book blurb for.
WordSift: At first glance, this is a seeminly no-frills word cloud tool limited to 65,000 words developed by Standford. Upon closer inspection, many possibilities are realized (primarily from an educational standpoint). Still, the visual thesaurus and links to Google image, text, and video sources make this a powerful tool for mapping information.
Yellowstone Encounters of the Animal Kind: The second installment in my National Park Experience travel memoirs.
Depending on your browser and your default settings, issues might arise with various plugins the word cloud sites need to function. The only way I could get a couple to work was to disable all of my Chrome Plugins and then turn them back on.
With some practice, it’s possible to make quite sophisticated clouds. Also, the additional text with book titles and author names was added using the free photo editing site PicMonkey. For more word clouds feel free to view Diction Activity: Word Clouds. A former student of mine made a word cloud out of the entire text of The Odyssey.
Have you tinkered with any of these word cloud sites? What other tools have you used to analyze text from a creative writing or SEO standpoint?
ANNOUNCEMENT: My editing and writing rates for 2015 now feature flat fees and a new discount system. Referrals are greatly appreciated.
Permission is granted to use the images in this post so long as an appropriate link to the image is given.
Wow Jeri I did not even know you were making blog design changes. Very nice! As for word clouds… I think they are very cool. I have not been successful with them, but they are very cool. I have tried using Chrome and Safari with zero success. Big sigh…
Cheryl, the blog design changes came about rather unexpectedly. Once I got started I couldn’t stop! Working on design made the word cloud a good change of pace. If there were more hours in a day, I’m sure I’d spend a lot more time mastering the Tagxedo site.
First, I love the new page! Really sharp looking and easily navigated…Kudos! And I am not familiar at all with these word clouds! Very cool! I love the ones you have made for these works. Engaging!
Jacquie, thanks. My old landing page never really achieved the interactive factor it needed to, so here’s to hoping this new theme will do the trick. Another great thing about word clouds is how it’s a quick way to make an image-specific to a blog post when you’re in a pinch.
Silly me. I didn’t know there were applications to make them. Thanks for correcting that. Very cool.
TB, it would be interesting to see what a world cloud of your 50 Year Project site would look like.
This is an easy way for me to catch myself using be verbs and too many adverbs. Thanks.
Glynis, it always seems like the weak verbs and “ing” words jump out once a word cloud is made. When I’m editing, I always notice the overuse of “looking.” That one drives me crazy.
Great links Jeri, some of them are new to me and I can’t wait to check them out. I love word clouds, something about them inspires ideas in me.
Debra, long time no see! Hope things are going well for you. There’s something about word clouds that gets ideas flowing for me as well.
What a perfect shape for a thriller in the Claudia must die word cloud. Fantastic to have these various resources. I’ve also found difficult in generating them in the past so good to have choices. Excellent point about them providing a visual clue for authors word choice. Your site looks awesome Jeri. Two thumbs up on all the changes. So much for taking a break!
A.K., I did have somewhat of a break but then decided to change the blog theme just a few days ago. Of course that made for some late nights before Monday’s post. I really need to learn how to do these things offline. I really like how the Claudia word cloud turned out as well. The number of shapes on the various sites isn’t huge, but the body shape did fit that one perfectly.
Umm… I like the way some of these word clouds look, but I’m still puzzled by how they may help a writer — other than giving a heads up about repetition of words and/or phrases. Am I missing something? Still it looks very cool!
Candy, word clouds can be a great way to pick up on weasel words. Some writers get in the habit of overusing “just” and “very.” In other instances, a cloud will reveal the overuse of weak verbs. So yes, it mostly helps with gaining insight on repetition (which can be of great help when looking at perceived versus real keywords in text). On a more abstract scale, it can help a writer aim for a greater variety of word choice. Take our friend Poe. A word cloud of his works is full of wonderful words unique to his style. When I made a word cloud for my short story collection, the words struck me as mundane. Not that simpler and more common words can’t work well for somebody’s writing style, but I’d rather aim to standout than blend in. A word cloud showed me I could up my ante when it came to effective word choice for creating better mood and atmosphere in my work.
Wow! Thanks for that explanation.
Periodically, I’ve used the FIND function to see if I’m relying to heavily on particular words in descriptive text. In naturalistic dialog, I sometimes aim for the opposite as characters, like real people, reuse words.
A word cloud of Poe’s adjectives alone… Wild!
Interesting – I never even knew these kind of sites existed! Thanks for the info.
Jan, word cloud sites are fun to play around with when you get the chance. I can already envision the travel-related keywords that would spring out if you made a word cloud of your blog.
Thank you so much Jeri for including Stealing Time in this. Love seeing the word cloud you created. It is helpful for my second book to look at this and step up my verb usage. I have to say that you were an excellent help when you edited my book on showing me the words I used too much.
I was very impressed with your editing and all of the helpful info you provided as well. If you’re reading this and are looking for an editor, you really need to check out Jeri. She provided me with a great edit and a lot of writing advice as well.
http://www.kjwatersauthor.blogspot.com
KJ, I’m so glad you found my editing helpful. Always remember that Ctrl+F can be a writer’s best friend for looking for how many times a word has been used in a manuscript 😉
The word clouds you presented here are absolute art, and your article is a must-read for writers preparing a manuscript for publication. Crutch words (especially crutch adverbs) can cripple a good story.
Thank you, Jeri, for sharing both these word-cloud generator sites and your advice on how to get the most out of them.
Jess, boo to adverbs! I wonder which is the most overused adverb? Suddenly? Quickly? Somebody needs to invent a word cloud maker that can be tweaked just to focus on this or that part of speech.
Hi Jeri,
I like the new look of your site! The word clouds are great visual representations of groups of concepts. In particular the one done in the silhouette of a person caught my eye. I may have to try to make a word cloud soon 🙂
Christy, the new year brought on my urge to change the look of the site a bit, but I’m still keeping the orange cuz it just makes me feel good. It would be amazing for you to make a word cloud out of your book of poetry.
I truly enjoyed this post and found it very useful when it comes to hierarchize topics … I have been using PicMonkey for quite a while and like the ending results…But that was, of course, mostly with a different purpose, meaning to edit images
I’ll make sure to take a more deep twist on the topic by checking out these applications…
And by the way, the new blog layout and logo are awesome… We all need some changes from time to time, don’t we?!… Happy 2015 ahead and looking forward to reading your future posts!. Best wishes, JWB. Aquileana 🙂
Aqui, I enjoy any kind of image or word manipulation. PicMonkey is a great site. Glad you like my new logo. Happy 2015 to you as well 🙂
Jeri, at first all I saw in the word cloud was a jumble headache but as I read through your post I saw the benefit to the writer. I am sharing this post with my writing group. We constantly glom onto word repetition in others story submissions. Will be interesting to see how word clouds go over. Thanks.
Kire, thanks for stopping by. A writer’s group such as yours that tends to bring up the impact of word repetition would be well-served to have some fun and insightful word cloud discussions.
Thanks for sharing this. It is something I didn’t know too much about and look forward to playing around with some of these. I love the sample you showed from Tagexedo, even though I’m stumbling a little bit over pronouncing that word.
Ken, I’m not sure how to pronounce it either 😉
Interesting sites. I have never played with word clouds before, but expect I will in the future. Interesting and fun.
Donna, let me know if you give any of those sights a try. A word cloud on your recent Cuba post would be interesting.
Hi Jeri – I wasn’t sure of the value of the word clouds and how they were to be used but reading your answer to Candy helped clarify that. Your posts are always so helpful and I thank you for willing to share your know-how. Happy 2015.
Lenie, thanks. Once I clarified to Candy I realized I could have included a bit more info along that vein in the body of the posts. Not all users will want to use the word clouds in more analytic ways, and that’s okay.
Hi Jeri,
I have always been a Wordle man, but I will check out the other programs. Thank you for the tips.
Gerry, if I had known you were already a Wordle man I would have maybe made a Tagexedo or Tagul cloud for you instead. Too bad the sites don’t allow the shape of France to be used.
That’s for suggesting some word cloud sites. I love how some of them look. I think would be great to make for posts you can’t find a relating image to.
Hi Jeri, Very cool. I always wondered how these images were made. They are really visually interesting. I particularly like the tagul and tagxedo ones. Certainly didn’t realize they helped writers in other ways too. Thanks for tips.
Love these! They instantly get my creative juices flowing so thanks Jeri!
Hello Jeri
Happy New Year & welcome Back
I love new look and these tweet-able texts, it is always easy to share in this way. But the color of twitter box is not going with rest of colors.
For me this is very nice informative and timely post. You know I did not know before how to make word clouds and for an upcoming post of mine, I was writing by my hands :D.
Now I will check these links and see which turn out best for me. I have also bookmarked this page to come back and check when I need.
Thank you for a wonderful post…for people like me who do not know anything about such stuff.
I’ve used Wordle a few times. One that looks really interesting here is Tagul. I’ve bookmarked it to give it a look and try.
Jeri, I’ve been blog stalking for a bit, but it’s time to comment. I love the word cloud idea, and I think it adds a certain unique visual appeal in different shapes. i’m going to do an animal tribute, and I’m going to do a word cloud in the shape of a milk bone. Love all your tips in your posts, and I’ll happily refer people to you for editorial services.
I had no idea this tool existed Jeri so thanks for pointing it out. Thanks also for the explanation you gave Candy as this helped me understand the practical purpose. It seems to me that it would give the writer a greater perception of how others view his or her work. As you say, makes you up the ante.
Tim, word clouds have really great possibilities in a classroom setting as well. It’s just too bad I’m not in the classroom at the moment.
I always wondered how people got these cool word clouds, but never thought about the practical applications. I just thought it was a neat graphic design tool. You’ve got me thinking about how to put one of these into use on my blog. My favorite is the one that makes the words into the woman’s silhouette. That would be a great book cover or marketing piece.
Meredith, word clouds definitely seem like something that would be right up your alley. At the moment, I’m most enamored with Tagexedo. Who knows? Maybe I will end up doing a word cloud decoupage on my pine furniture. It’s almost all sanded now and I’ve decided to try decoupage on the top of my dresser.
Hi Jeri – Very interesting subject matter. It inspired me to apply “word clouding” to a short story of mine, and it revealed that I used a whole lot of words ending in “ing” in my short story called A Pig For Love, which immediately got me to thinking about it. Maybe too much thinking? I don’t know, it’s all fun. I penned a blog post on the subject of word clouding this short story. It’s on my site. Hope I didn’t pre-empt your own intentions to follow up this post with an example.
Larry, it’s always cool when one blog post begets another blog post 🙂 I’m headed over now to check out your “Pig in Love” word cloud.
Jeri — I’ve always known about Wordle but was unfamiliar with the other tools. When I first started blogging word clouds were much more common and a lot of people used them as graphics. Thanks for this review of the different tools. Time to use one again one of my blogs.
PS — meant to tell you that I like your new design, too.
Jeannette, each theme is always an improvement on the last. It’s hard to imagine you’ve been with me since my first theme. I also remember your early advice to change to white text on a black background.
Jeannette, I remember well when it seemed like word clouds were all over the place. I first fell in love with them when I ordered a word cloud poster of Poe’s poem “The Raven.” I asked a ton of people at school how to make them only to realize at the end of the day that the Wordle address was right at the bottom of the cloud.
Thanks for the tips. I have not used word clouds yet but have bookmarked this post so I have a resource if I should want to try it.
Alice, glad you’ve bookmarked it for later use, but be careful, word clouds can be addictive 😉
I like the cloud for Claudia must Die. Interesting choice to give it a feminine shape. The image makes the title more memorable.
Jon, definitely agree the feminine shape makes it pop. I just wish the site had more shapes to choose from.
Oh Jeri what a great resource list! I remember seeing one of these tag cloud services last year but never took the time to bookmark it so this information will really come in handy!. Hope you had a great holiday and Happy New Year!
Marquita, thanks so much for finding the links valuable and Happy New Year to you too!
Thank you, Jeri! I love this article. I didn’t know there were sites like this. It’s a real pain to make one from scratch!
Beth, you’ve made a word cloud from scratch? YIKES!!!
I had never heard of a word cloud before, but to be honest I am a caveman with a blog (I think there is a story in there)
I reminded me of a 1960’s avante-gard art, but after reading your description, it certainly helped me grab the concept of it.
Thank you for sharing.
William, glad I could bring the world or word clouds to a blogging caveman such as yourself 😉
Interesting; I kind of knew the merit of these, but never really knew how they were created. It strikes me, though, that even though I never inspected them with a magnifying glass or anything, that words like ‘and’ or ‘to’ etc, don’t appear. One might think these would feature largely in most manuscripts. I wonder if usage of various words like these are excluded? Humph. Nice new look Jeri – even if I did have to enter in all my details again!
SP, I think most of the word cloud programs are defaulted to eliminate those tiny words we use so often. You can also set some of them to eliminate certain words. A few character’s names usually tend to predominate, so if the maker of the cloud really wants to focus on word choice, I’d opt to leave the character names off. Glad you like the new look and were patient enough to enter your info again.
I’ve never heard of those site before. I know that I can use some of them for my sites.
I haven’t played with word clouds, but they look like fun! I think I’ll try out the shape forming ones. Those look cool.
BTW, I’ve been offline for a while, but I must say, I love the look of your site!
Loni, welcome back to blog land! With your love of typography, word clouds will probably provide much entertainment for you.
Has anyone ever seen a book made out of word clouds? A Word Cloud Art Book! I love and use Tagul by the way. I’m making 1000+ word clouds for a project and was thinking about making a book out of them. 🙂