Wordle

A few weeks ago, I discovered Wordle. And now I can't quit.

Wordle is a website that allows you to upload text that will then be transformed into a "word cloud," as the site describes it. Words that appear most frequently in the text will appear larger and words that appear only once or twice will be quite small. The order and organization of the words is random and once you enter text, you can ask the site to generate new designs (or tweak a specific design) until you're happy with it.

There's nothing very fancy about the site or about its product, but what I find most interesting is the idea of tranforming a set of words into a different kind of visual text. The word cloud contains the essential elements from the original text, the words, but in their organization and presentation, the meaning is altered. We don't know exactly how to read a text presented in this way.

It's been an interesting exercise for me to write something, tranform it into a word cloud and see which words are largest, towering above the others. What am I really trying to say? Sometimes the wordle makes it undeniably clear.

Here's the Wordle from this blog's text: