 |
Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage |
|
 |
||
| Composition 2 English 1102 |
Contact Form | |
Writing With Computers
Some Tools for Text Analysis
Current work:
Days remaining this term:
Notes:
Add Note |
Log in? | Privacy | Change Name & Email
Computers can offer us valuable insights into our writing style simply because they can process text quickly and thoroughly. Computers do not get tired or bored, and therefore they do not miss items we are hoping to see. Here I present a few writing tools that I hope will be of some help as you use them to analyze your writing and learn more about the patterns and processes that are evident in your work. First is a concordancer, second a find and replace text utility, and finally there is a Word macro and toolbar, useful to teachers who use Word to add editing comments into documents. Some suggestions for use are included with each tool.
Concordancer
A concordance program can be a handy tool for you to learn about the patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and style in your work or the work of others. This concordancer allows you to search a text file for a "key word in context." You must upload your file to the Papyr.com server first. An easy file upload utility is ready for you with the Concordancer. (See the upload utility below.) Sample texts and suggested exercises are presented as well.
The concordancer that I created was written in Java and ran as an applet on this page. It served on this page for thirty years, but most modern browsers no longer support Java applets, so I have substituted Danko Sipka's concordancer instead.
(See also sample texts and suggested uses further below.)
You can experiment with any of the files below already uploaded to the server. Just type their file names into the 'Data file' area of the concordancer, and click on the LOAD button. Pay attention to upper and lower case in the file names: the concordancer is case sensitive. Ygb.txt is not the same as ygb.txt to the concordancer.
- bloom.txt: an excerpt of Molly Bloom's monologue from James Joyce's Ulysses
- chaucer.txt: the opening lines of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- riders.txt: an excerpt of John Millington Synge's play in one act — Riders to the Sea
- ygb.txt: an excerpt of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown"
- chicago.txt: Chicago Poems, the complete collection of poems originally published in 1916 by Carl Sandburg. It includes such well-known poems as "Chicago," "Fog," "The Plowboy," and "The Harbor."
- darkness.txt: the complete text of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
This concordancer allows you to search a text file for a "key word in context." In other words, the concordancer will display for you every instance of a search term in context — n characters to the left and right of the search term. The default n is 30 characters, but you can adjust that to almost anything you prefer. However, the search term does not need to be a word. The search term could be a phrase (such as at this point in time), a part of a word (such as ing), a single letter, or even a mark of punctuation.
- Exercise 1: Search for a point of view shift.
- Often writers use the second person pronoun you to refer to people generally, as in You will often find that others are quite helpful if you would only ask. There is nothing wrong or improper using the pronoun you in that sentence if the writer were writing directly to a specific audience, one reader, perhaps, as in a personal letter where a father is giving advice to a daughter. But if this sentence were in an essay about the kindness of strangers, and if the writer meant people in general (as in People generally will find that others are quite helpful if they would only ask), then the writer has committed a point of view shift error. You can search your own documents for point of view shifts of this sort by uploading a file and searching for the word you. As you read through the list of second person pronouns in your text, ask yourself if you meant to address your readers directly or if you really meant people generally.
- Exercise 2: Search for transitional elements.
- After studying the types of coherence and cohesion devices in English, search for those devices in your own documents, and compare that to some other texts or other writers you admire. In your work, do you find that you use one kind of cohesive device more than others? Do you use cohesive patterns only at the beginning of sentences or the beginnings of paragraphs, or do you use cohesive devices elsewhere too?
- Exercise 3: Study beginnings and endings of sentences.
- Rather than search for a word, search for the beginning and endings of your sentences by looking for a full stop (also known as a period) and a empty space (by tapping the space bar), i.e., . In this way, you can isolate just the beginnings and endings of your sentences into a list. Why? Remember from our discussion of style that the beginnings and endings of sentences are particularly important for writers. Do you end sentences with new information and "semantically-rich" words like nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs? Are you ending sentences with "semantically-poor" words, such as pronouns or prepositions? Also do you begin sentences with cohesive links to earlier ideas? The concordancer might help you see the patterns in your own work.
If you would like to explore how changing vocabulary or punctuation might improve or provide insights into your own writing, look also at the find and replace utility below and the suggestions for more experiments with writing style you can find there. Please feel free to email me with your ideas and suggestions for more exercises or uses you find for the concordancer.
Find and Replace Text
Instructions: (See also the suggested uses further below.)
- Type your text into the text box below. It is possible to copy and paste the text into the text box (or a word processor later).
- Type in the phrases, words, marks of punctuationor other parts of a word that you wish to find and replace in your text.
- Click on Begin.
- You can count the times an item occurs in your text by using Count Instances.
- Click on Clear all fields to delete all text from all boxes.
The lexicon (the set of words and morphemes in a language and a speaker's knowledge of them) that writers choose has a dramatic effect on their writing style. You can use the Find and Replace Utility to explore how changes in the lexicon change the "stylistic impact" of your writing.
- Exercise 1: Search for a style marker.
- There are several constructions and vocabulary items that are the marker of a less formal style. For example, writers are more likely to use contractions, such as n't for not in less formal writing. To explore how changing this one marker of informal writing can alter the stylistic level of your writing, search for items like n't, 'd, 'll and 's. Replace them with not, had, will, and is. (However, 's might also be a contraction for has, so you might find some verb form errors in your text after that replacement.)
You could search for other style markers as well, replace them, and explore how such changes in vocabulary change the tone of your work. For example, try changing the second person you to people or students or some other more specific noun. This change eliminates a usage error called point of view shilft, as in changing You should study hard if you care about the future. to Students should study hard if students care about the future. (A global replace for you will change some legitimate uses of the pronoun for direct address to the reader however.)
Note! To replace text with better results, try adding spaces before and/or after the word you wish to change to be sure that you change just that word. For example, if you search for and replace you with people without adding preceding and following spaces, you will also change your, yours, youth, and young, etc. into peopler, peoplers, peopleth, and peopleng, respectively.
- Exercise 2: Search for an overused transitional element.
- After studying the types of coherence and cohesion devices in English, search for those devices in your own documents, and change any coordinators at the beginnings of sentences to something else. For example, change overused markers of addition at the beginning of sentences, such as And, to Additionally or Furthermore. Or try changing commonly used coordinators of contrast such But to others such as However or On the other hand at the beginning of sentences.
- Exercise 3: Study the differences between coordination with and and asyndetic coordination with punctuation.
- Rather than using and as the sole marker of coordination between clauses, try using punctuation (the semicolon) as the link between clauses. Search for a comma, a space, and the word and (as in , and), replacing them with a semicolon and an empty space (by tapping the space bar), i.e., ; Refer to our discussion of coordination and subordination for more about the differences between these two types of coordination.
And Now Something for Us Teachers...
As a teacher, materials developer, and web developer/programmer, I have long advocated an "any browser, any word processor, any platform, any time" philosophy for all online courses (though I have recently changed my mind about that as you can read for yourself by following the link above). In short, that means I adapt my practice and materials development to the software and hardware that the students already use. Now, most of my students use Word as their word processor because Microsoft has an illegal monopoly in the industry. That means, therefore, that I too use Word, and consequently I have developed a few macros to make routine writing chores faster and easier.
The editing toolbar (pictured below) is one of the macro sets that I have developed. The toolbar allows me to insert editing comments into a student's essay with the click of a button. The buttons (and associated editing comments) are based on the Twenty Common Usage Errors found in the writing of first year composition students from the research of Lunsford and Conners ("Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research," published in The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing 2nd ed. Ed. Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. p 398.).
If you also use Word to correct your students' essays, feel free to download and modify the editing toolbar for your own purposes. This toolbar and macro set should work with Word 2000 (also known as version 9) and newer. To use this toolbar with your installation of Word,
- download the file to your hard disk, editing_toolbar.dot (right click to save),
- run your anti-virus program of choice over the file to be sure it's clean (always a good practice), and then
- start Word and open the file editing_toolbar.dot. You should immediately see the toolbar.
Figure 1: A reduced screen capture of the Editing Toolbar for Word
Please feel free to email me with your ideas and suggestions for more exercises or uses you discover for these text analysis tools.
Take Note! | Table of Contents | Syllabus | Course Calendar | eForum | Search
The HyperTextBooks | The English Main Page | College of DuPage
