Alternative Word Cloud Generator: Tagul
I’ve used Wordle and Tagxedo in the past to generate a word cloud of text for different projects, but I recently found this new one that produces an interactive word cloud – Tagul.
Using either your Twitter or Google account to login (others are available) you can start making a word cloud from either a URL, text, or a set of tags you define. You have complete control over the appearance and font, as well as the cloud shape and colour. One very important
Here is a Tagul word cloud from the text in my first EDC MOOC post – the embed feature isn’t working very well in WordPress (it loads a whole lot of empty white space as well for some reason) but click the link below to view it on the Tagul website
There are a few tips I’d recommend to using it, these being:
- Use the ‘add common words for [language] on the ‘filter’ option – this will remove all the ‘and’ or ‘the’ or ‘can’ from the cloud and make it more meaningful.
- Choose an appropriate font and colour to make it both readable and accessible, you don’t have to stick with the default (as I did above).
- Try the different shapes and ‘rotation’ options and select one that works for you and how you want to display the generated cloud.
