Wordle – fun with words and useful tool for writers

Wordle is both a fun time waster for people who like words, and a useful tool for writers. You can upload any text you want into Wordle, and play with the fonts, colors, and layouts, and it will produce a picture based on the words, visually showing you the words you’ve used most frequently. The most frequently used words appear the largest. You can see where this can come in handy for fiction writers, especially, finding overused words, as well as themes, plot threads, etc that are used the most frequently throughout a book.

The results can be aesthetically pleasing as well as interesting and possibly useful. If you want to keep the image you’ve created just for yourself, don’t save it on Wordle. (Save it via an screenshot utility. You can also save it as a .pdf file; see Wordle’s FAQ for help.) Otherwise, anything you save will be available for anyone to print out or use. You might not want to do that with, say, your novel. On the other hand, I think it could make a small though neat promotional tool, especially if you save it under the book’s title and with your name. I saw a few on Wordle like that–and while I didn’t stay to peruse them, I did see the books’ titles–which is part of book promotion.

Wordle image “Kids need reading stamina” (based on a PowerPoint she made to present the case for reading) by Anne Robinson @ Wordle

Thanks to Justine Larbalestier and her wonderful post on Wordle and how she used it for her novels, for introducing me to Wordle’s usefulness and fun play factor.

You need to have Java installed on your computer or your browser in order to view the Wordle creations.

July 4th, 2008