How Wordle Is Actually Used

Wordle was not designed for visualization experts, text analysis experts, or even experienced computer users. I tried to make Wordle as appliance-like as possible.

As of this writing, people have created and saved over 1,400,000 word clouds in the Wordle gallery. They have been used to summarize and decorate business presentations and PhD theses, to illustrate news articles and television news broadcasts, and to distill and abstract personal and painful memories for victims of abuse. Wordle has also found an enthusiastic community in teachers of all stripes, who use Wordles to present spelling lists, to summarize topics, and to engage preliterate youngsters in the enjoyment of text.