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I’m a rather verbose person by nature. As a kid, I never worried much about having a 500 word report prepared by the end of the week. I usually had it done by the end of the period.
When I wrote Podcasting For Dummies, I had to learn to curtail much of that. That’s a very different writing style. But I’ve adopted it. And I think it makes my writing more effective. I also give props to Patrick McLean for being an inspiration. Seriously, if you want to know how to write clearly, concisely and effectively, you couldn’t ask for a better writing coach than Patrick.
Which brings me to the discussion of the 4322 four thousand, three hundred twenty-two (4,322) word blog post by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management for Google. The title was The meaning of open, a topic of some import with me. So I read it. All of it. Whew. Now I’m tired. I’m glad I read it. But chances are, you won’t take the time. It’s simply too long. He’s approaching the halfway mark of a novella.
Luckily, the advent of the web — speaking of open — has provided a visualization tool that helps. Wordle is a free service that lets you paste in text and create an on-the-fly word cloud. The more a word is used, the larger it appears in the loud. There are other factors involved as well. Here’s the word cloud of Mr. Rosenberg’s blog post:
Word cloud for really long Google blog post
While it’s a poor substitute for actually reading the work, it can provide valuable insight. Insight that helps you decide if you should read the whole thing or not. Conversely, this could be a helpful self-check measure. Create your own word cloud out of something you are writing. Does the cloud match your intent? It should. If it doesn’t, you didn’t use the right words.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Word clouds offer interesting snapshots, but without that all important context to glue it together it can never replace the thing itself.
Love your new site – especially your tagline. Quite pithy.
Glad you like the site, Jeff. And thanks for the phrase. Told you I was stealing it.
You’re spot on with your summary. I think clouds can be a valuable tool on long posts and to pull meaning out off a span of posts. People as skimmers and skippers, so all that context we’ve tried to use as glue may go unseen.
Nicely done, Evo. As a result of this post I both read the Google “Meaning of Open” post AND created a wordle for my recent proposal for a change to the DMCA http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1491476/Proposed_DMCA_Change
And now I want to read your post based on your cloud, Chad. Where can I find it?