WordCount™ is an artistic experiment in the way we use
language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in
order of commonness. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to
the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance.
The larger the word, the more we use it. The smaller the word, the more uncommon
it is.
WordCount data currently comes from the British
National Corpus®, a 100 million word collection of samples
of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed
to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage.
WordCount includes all words that occur at least twice in the BNC®.
In the future, WordCount will be modified to track word usage within
any desired text, website, and eventually the entire Internet.
WordCount was designed with a minimalist aesthetic, to let the information
speak for itself. The interface is clean, basic and intuitive. The
goal is for the user to feel embedded in the language, sifting through
words like an archaeologist through sand, awaiting the unexpected
find. Observing closely ranked words tells us a great deal about
our culture. For instance, “God” is one word from “began”,
two words from “start”, and six words from “war”.
Another sequence is "america ensure oil opportunity".
Conspiracists unite! As ever, the more one explores, the more is
revealed. Some of the best sequences people have sent me are here.
WordCount was designed and developed by Jonathan
Harris of Number27,
in conjunction with the FABRICA
studio of Italy.
 |
WordCount recently
won AIGA's
(American Institute of Graphic Arts) 2003
Award for Information Design. |
|
< BACK TO WORDCOUNT
| Email: jjh at number27 dot org
WordCount™ ©2003 Jonathan Harris
| Number27
|
