I know Wordles are so last week, but I just decided to Wordleize Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugurals. I’d like to say the results are stunning or at least interesting. They aren’t. Still, if you’d care to see for yourself, you can peek below the fold.
1st:
“Constitution.” “Union.” “States.” “Government.” Sure, yup, got it.
2nd:
“WAR.” Ya think? Well, wait, on second thought, “Union” and “God” share equal billing? That’s kind of cool, I suppose
The Edge of the American West 
8 comments
October 28, 2011 at 6:32 pm
urbino
God, war, and union. Yup, that about sums it up.
Those are Wordles? I thought they were word clouds.
October 28, 2011 at 6:34 pm
ari
Those are Wordles? I thought they were word clouds.
Whatever, man. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all stuff the kids do on my lawn.
October 28, 2011 at 6:37 pm
ari
Anyway, I changed my mind. I think these findings are the foundation upon which I shall write a great work of history.
October 28, 2011 at 6:47 pm
urbino
Plaudits and whatnot!
October 28, 2011 at 9:20 pm
Vance Maverick
These are always fun. Is the angle chosen by the software, or by you?
The paintings I see most frequently these days are whatever’s on show at the Dolores Park Cafe. Right now it’s Alicia Buelow, and her pictures there have an unfortunate resemblance to these cloudles. They’re decent-looking, but not more so than these clusters cranked out by the thousand by a mechanized text scanner….
October 28, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Vance Maverick
By the way, all you people who have complained about the lack of a comment preview/editing function on this blog, let me tell you, it’s great.
October 28, 2011 at 9:33 pm
andrew
“word cloud” is a more general term. Wordles actually try to look nice. I’m not sure if the proportions are exact, though, so you might not be able to draw much in the way of conclusions from that. It’s certainly possible to design word clouds where everything is exactly proportional, but that probably leads to ugliness.
November 1, 2011 at 7:45 am
jroth95
If you do FDR’s first inaugural, the Wordle forms the words, “Lincoln was better”.