Word Cloud Generator
Paste any text and every word is sized by how often it appears, with the count for every word the cloud draws printed in a table underneath, so the picture can be checked against the arithmetic that made it. The list of common words it skips sits on the page in a box you can edit, the type is the fonts already on your computer, and the counting and the drawing both happen in this tab: nothing is uploaded and no account is asked for. Download PNG saves the same drawing as a 960 by 680 pixel image.
The cloud appears here.
No word cloud yet.
- Words shown
- Common words
- Palette
- Shape
Paste some text and the cloud draws itself.
The PNG saves at 960 by 680 pixels, twice the 480 by 340 drawing it is made from, on the same dark background, in the fonts already on your computer.
Every count in the cloud
The words the cloud is drawn from, in the order it draws them, with the share each takes of the 0 words counted. A word missing from the picture is one that would not fit in the space left, never one that was counted differently.
The counts appear here with the cloud.
The common words, and how words are matched
A plain list of 174 English function words, bundled with the page and never fetched. Edit it here: take a word out and it returns to the cloud, add one and it goes. Matching ignores capitals, so a listed word is skipped however it was typed.
174 words on the list, applied to the counts above.
Common questions
- What decides how big a word is?
- Its count in your text, and nothing else. The most used word takes the largest size on the scale, the least used of the words drawn takes the smallest, and the counts in between are placed on that scale by their square roots, so one very common word cannot swallow the picture. Two words used the same number of times always come out the same size and the same weight, and if every word is used the same number of times there is nothing to tell them apart, so they all come out the same size. Every count is printed in the table under the cloud, so any word in the picture can be checked against the number that sized it.
- How do I remove common words like the, of and it?
- They are already out: Common words is set to Skip, and the 174-word list it uses is printed in an editable box under the cloud. Take a word out of that box and it comes straight back into the cloud; type a word in and it goes. Set Common words to Keep and the list stops being applied at all. The list is a plain list bundled with the page rather than something fetched, so it cannot change under you, and matching ignores capitals, so a listed word is skipped however it was typed.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. The counting and the drawing both run in the page itself, so a transcript, a set of survey answers or an unpublished draft never leaves your machine, and no limit is imposed on how much you paste. Your settings and up to about 60,000 characters of your text are kept in this browser's own storage so they are still here when you come back; a longer text is counted in full but not saved. Start over at the top of the page forgets both.
- How do I save the word cloud as an image?
- Press Download PNG. The cloud is drawn as SVG text on the page, and the download renders that same drawing onto a canvas at twice its drawing size, then saves it as a PNG at the pixel size printed next to the button, which is 960 by 680. The background is the dark shade you see behind the cloud, and the type is the system font stack already on your computer, so nothing is fetched while the file is made.
- Why does one word appear twice, once with a capital?
- Because it was typed both ways, and counting the words as they were typed is the honest starting point. Tick Group Cloud and cloud as one word under the counts and the two entries merge into one. Nothing else is merged for you: cat and cats stay two words here, because the tool counts words rather than reading meaning. The one exception is punctuation, not spelling: a curly apostrophe and a straight one are the same mark, so don't is one word whichever keyboard typed it.
- How many words does the cloud draw?
- 25, 50 or 100, whichever Words shown is set to, taken from the top of the count table. A word that will not fit in the room left is left out rather than drawn over its neighbour or over the edge, and the line under the cloud says how many of the words asked for were drawn. Shape switches the outline the words are packed into between a block and a circle, which changes how much room there is.
- Does the shortest word setting change the counts?
- It changes which words are counted, and it says so: words shorter than the setting are left out before anything is counted, which is why the totals move when you change it. It starts at 2 characters, so stray single letters left behind by formatting do not become part of the picture.
Every word size comes from its count in the text you pasted, after the stop-word list shown on the page, and the counts are listed under the cloud so any of them can be checked. It counts words, not meaning: it will not tell a name from a verb, and it groups two forms of one word only if you ask it to.