Friday, April 15, 2011

Visual Vindication: A Wordle

 A Wordle is a fun way of mixing up the text of a given document (in this case, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman) and highlighting the main words, emboldened in proportion to the number of appearances each makes. The software filters out overly common words such as articles and pronouns and auxiliary verbs, giving a visual representation of what the text is about. Some instructors use them in class to whet the appetites of their students. Notice that multiple different Wordles can be generated from the same text, varying in colour, orientation, and other aesthetics, but maintaining the same balance of weight.


Wordle: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

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Wordle: Vindication on the Rights of Women

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Wordle: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman


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From the Wordle home page 
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

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