Ever wondered what words you use most in your writing? I know I have a tendency to say “Jesus” too often (not in a religious sense, but more as an expression of dismay or shock). I also tend to use lots of similes — I swear I can’t go more than two lines without an “as” or “like” thrown in there.
The cool thing about www.wordle.net is that you can paste in a selection of any length of text and they’ll create a “word cloud” for you. The words occurring most frequently will appear the largest.
Here’s my “word cloud” for the first 100 pages of my novel-in-progress, Cherry Blossoms:
See, I knew “like” would be a prominent word.
Pretty cool, huh?
I’m thinking of collecting a series of work e-mails and seeing what words appear most often in that context. I suppose that would be a post for the “By Day” site though…
That’s a very fun program (or whatever)! I think that one of my top words would be “anyway”. I use it WAY too much.
I love Wordles. You get these short bursts of near-sense, like (in yours) “Even another call makes hours better maybe”.