This will probably be of absolutely zero value to most of you, but I’m trying to allow myself to occasionally just blog about things that I find interesting or amusing.

There is a website called Wordle.net that allows you to generate “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in your text and you can tweak the clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Typically this may be referred to as a “toy” (in fact, that’s the exact terminology the fine folks at Wordle.net use to describe their site), but I feel like it could have some positive applications for writing sermons and essays.

For instance, if you were to drop your sermon text into Wordle and not see the word “Jesus” show up prominently, you might rethink your approach to that day’s topic.

Furthermore, if you were to drop in the text from a paper you were writing on country music and the phrase “Satan Is Your Father” were to come up as prominently featured, then you’d know you were on the right track to an accurate country music essay.

The above word cloud was generated from an essay on my website about the atonement called Christus Victor. Check Wordle.net out for yourself; it’s a fun but useful tool.

Tags: wordle