TextArc

“TextArc is a tool designed to help people discover patterns and concepts in any text by leveraging a powerful, underused resource: human visual processing. It compliments approaches such as Statistical Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics by providing an overview, letting intuition help extract meaning from an unread text.

TextArc represents the entire text as two concentric spirals on the screen: each line is drawn in a tiny (one pixel tall) font around the outside, starting at the top; then each word is drawn in a more readable size. Important typographic features, like the mouse-tail shape of a poem at about two o’clock, can be seen because the tiny lines retain their formatting. Frequently used words stand out from the background more intensely.”

The following examples show an analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which demonstrates TextArc’s structure and some capabilities.

Here "Rabbit" is highlighted in the arc and an overlay full-text window. Lines containing "Rabbit" are drawn in green around the arc, in the text window, and even in the scrollbar.

Copyright W. Bradford Paley

For a larger version of this image click here.

A concordance shows how many times each word is used. Words can be looked up in a Thesaurus and drawn in red.

Copyright W. Bradford Paley

For a larger version of this image click here.

If you want to try TextArc (you definitely should) go to TextArc.org.