Playing With Words

A single word can be very powerful; a carefully chosen group of words even more so.  Spoken or written they can change thinking, relationships or the course of history.  They can't be erased once they have been released.

Word clouds have become a visual expression, a more artistic display, of word arrangement.  Wordle was one of the first generators I used.  I enjoyed experimenting with Wordlings and Tagxedo for this post.

Word It Out is an application that offers the ability to create, explore other created word clouds or participate with other members of the Word It Out community by using the blog, checking out the FAQ section, read how others are using Word It Out, make suggestions and point out problems. It is free to users who are 13 years of age or older.  To begin enter in text at the home page.

As you type spelling errors are underlined in red.  When all the text has been entered, click the green Word it out! button.  At the next screen your cloud will appear.

At that point with a single click you can alter the look of the word cloud with a new random selection (Random settings), realign the center of the words (Set target) or redraw the word cloud with the settings already in place (Redraw).  By scrolling down beneath your word cloud you can manually customize the look of your creation (word cloud) altering the colours, text, size and layout.  Word list settings and how the text is analyzed(words/punctuation characters to leave in or take out) can be changed also.

When you are satisfied click the Save button.  The next screen asks you to enter in a title, short description of your word cloud, a related web page, the sharing options of public (everyone) or private (only for those with the link you provide) and your email address.  An email is sent immediately with a link to confirm your address and to provide you with a secret link to the word cloud.

Your word cloud can be posted on numerous social networks, emailed, printed, downloaded to your computer as an image or embedded using HTML into a website or blog.

I really like all the features of Word It Out.  It can be as simple as using the random selection or modified manually by using all the extra controls available.  Here is my Word It Out for Favorite First Lines.

Word cloud made with WordItOut