The Charge of the Light Brigade ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If ~ Rudyard Kipling
My Blogs & Writing
Have you heard of Wordle? It’s a fun site a lot of bloggers are talking about at the moment. It generates a tag cloud out of the most frequent words used in a piece of text. You can control the appearance of the cloud and it looks very artistic when it’s done.
What a lot of people haven’t thought of, though, is that it’s a useful tool for writers as well. Ever written a story and been worried that you’ve used too many common words? Well, copy the text into Wordle and you’ll get an idea of if you’re overusing certain words.
It’s also an excellent tool for analysing poetry. If you have a favourite poem you can copy it into Wordle and get a better idea of the poem’s structure; the most common words used, whether the common words are long or short, etc.
These are some of the Wordles I’ve made. The first two are of my favourite poems, Kipling’s If and Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade; the smaller ones are of my blogs and writing. Most of my writing is of a similar size, so perhaps I don’t reuse words as often as I thought. My old English teachers will be happy.
Do you know any poems you’d like to see Wordlised? Some of Joyce’s would be interesting… they’d certainly be easier to read. 😉
What an innovative use of Wordle. I particularly like the image of your recent blogs, and the Kipling, one of the few poems I’ve memorized and one of my favorites. Seeing all its words displayed that way was almost as moving as the poem is. I hadn’t known which was the most prominent word there, but I liked seeing it. These are pieces of art. They ought to be framed! 🙂 I’m off to try e e cummings.
CJ: Glad you liked them, Muse. Wordle definitely has its uses as a tool for writers and poets, so I was surprised no one else had thought of it. I found If interesting as it’s such a carefully layered poem. You learn a lot about its structure by breaking it down.
E.E. Cummings would be interesting. I’ll try Shelley’s Ozymandias at some stage too.
I love the way you have the Charge of the Light Brigade. One of the first poems I ever learned…. So impressed as a child my Great Uncle telling it to me from memory…So excited someone would love words so much as to know them by heart. My taste is very contemporary and I would love to purchase this so I can frame and enjoy it!! Can i get it somewhere??
thanks for sharing!!