Monday, June 23, 2008

Intriguing New Tool - Wordle


This is the entire text of 1 John entered into Wordle, a tool that generates word clouds based on the number of occurrences of each word in a block of text. [Click for larger image ]

This could possibly give some interesting results by visually displaying the importance of words based upon the author's frequency of use. As you can see (if you click on the pic above), besides the word "God," John uses the word "know" even more frequently than "love" in his first epistle. This visually (and therefore, quickly) underlines the purpose of John's letter: "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life." John was combating the lies of the false teachers by giving assurance and knowledge.

I need to check if Wordle works with the ancient Greek text. Give it a shot with the text you are working on and let me know what you find.

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