I just came across an article on the World Wide Web featuring software that analyses text in search for the most prominent words. It is called Wordle (www.wordle.net). As the accompanying text explains, Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from any text. The clouds give greater graphical prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. One can place any text into a box or enter the address of any blog or other web page into another. It took me a few seconds to type in the address of my Residua (www.residua.org). In spite of my blog’s gargantuan size, the word cloud came out rather quickly. Depending on their prominence on the blog, the words came out in five sizes. There was only one word that came out in the largest lettering: year. In terms of size, it was followed by these words in alphabetical order: great, cunt, and women. Then came these words: country, eyes, many, and world. The fourth-order words came next: annoyed, beloved, best, blessed, celebrated, cunts, especially, feel, hope, last, notice, one, people, plural, readers, silly, winter, and word. The words that came in the smallest font were most numerous, and so I include here only some of them: Afghanistan, alas, announcement, artist, bad, banker, bright, capitalism, careful, changed, concerned, conspicuous, December, despise, economics, event, followed, home, hope, Iceland, Indonesia, Iraq, language, looking, mind, news, Nigeria, overall, perfect, talking, troubled, scientist, singular, slaves, sparkling, springs, still, struggling, surprises, Syria, system, trick, turf, Ukraine, wolf… I was a bit surprised by the countries in the word cloud, but the software must favor the most recent entries. Anyhow, Wordle turned out to be loads of fun. The graphical arrangement of words by size was quite pleasing, as well. I must give it another try some day soon. Word clouds are likely to change each time, I reckon.

Addendum I (February 17, 2015)

As I guessed, my second attempt with Wordle yielded pretty different results. This time around, the words came out in four sizes. In the largest lettering, there were the following words, in alphabetical order one more time: article, black, foods, one, space, and window. There were not too many words one size lower: colonization, Croatian, go, last, long, take, time, and short. The third-order words were as follows: argues, crap, game, good, doubt, figure, get, humans, jewelry, just, load, make, many, miracle, much, news, next, opportunity, right, wars, and way. There were too many words of the smallest size to list here, but here is a fair sample: alas, anywhere, bright, ceremony, developed, enough, feat, inaugural, interglacial, nationalist, need, pedestrian, science, silly, smooth, slaughter, solar, stars, stockings, street, stupidity, ushered, waddles, watching, weather, witness… Having played with Wordle twice, I am reasonably sure that the software pays little attention to my older writings. In fact, the largest number of words I recognize come from my most recent pieces. For better or worse, I am none the wiser about my magnum opus. I can only hope that the software I am looking for is on my way.

Addendum II (February 18, 2015)

I played with Wordle a few more times today, and it has been pretty consistent throughout. One word dominates all the others by a wide margin: words. In fact, it is humongous in any word cloud I have seen so far. I am sure by now that the software considers only the most recent pieces. For instance, Japan has popped up among the countries of prominence. And so has survival. But there is one word that is gaining in prominence as of late: Wordle. It is getting bigger and bigger. Surprise, surprise. In short, the toy is of little use to me in getting to understand my own writings. The same holds for you, dear reader.