Using Tag Clouds to Visualize Revision You probably know this: for folks in many humanities departments at large research schools like UIUC, a published academic monograph is a key part of getting tenure. That book is often derived in part from the dissertation, but there's this culture in place where, no matter how great that dissertation is, one generally has to demonstrate how much the book is different from the dissertation. This demonstration is usually done in prose.

Enter the tag cloud. Dump the text from both documents into an online clouder like tagcrowd.com, and compare results.

Here's the cloud from my dissertation, completed in 2005:






And then here's the cloud of the book manuscript circa 6.2009:






As you can see, some themes have stayed the same; others have disappeared or been added. For me, knowing these two documents so well, the tag clouds are detailed maps of the writing and rewriting. Each term is a pathway into so many decisions, dead ends, and productive avenues.

Next time I teach revision, I think I'll have students cloud their drafts.  ¶ 1:48 PM