Which parts of a text have smaller or bigger sentences on average? Which key words are notably missing from a set of texts when we might expect their presence, or which words are used with surprisingly high frequency when we wouldn’t expect them?

Created by Stéfan Sinclair in 2003, Voyant

Links to an external site.is an easy-to-use, web-based tool for distant reading and performing certain kinds of text analysis. It allows us to find insights in a text or collection of texts by showing us how often each word is used and where, indicating connections among words, visualizing distributions, and creating polished visualizations with a point-and-click interface.

For this first project, introduced in the discussion forum called Introduction to Project 1, please choose a text or collection of texts that you would like to study and use Voyant to answer some non-obvious question about it. Prepare a report with the six sections outlined in the guide to writing project reports. The report should be over two pages long—more if you include any charts—when written in a 12-point font with double-spaced lines and 1-inch margins. This should put you over 800 words, divided unevenly among the sections. Upload the file as a Microsoft Word file.

The question you choose to study might vary greatly in scope and specificity. In the same way you’ve chosen your own text or set of texts, you should also choose your own question to answer something that drives your interest. Here are some sample questions to give you some ideas, with parenthetical additions suggesting the kind of thing that would bear further consideration in the Discussion section of the report:

The words “good” and “evil” show up a lot in the Bible. Do they show up in the same places, or does one only appear when the other is absent?
The word “power” and related words like “powerful” play a crucial role in The Wizard of Oz. With what other words are related to it, and how are these words used?
Which parts of a text have smaller or bigger sentences on average?
Which key words are notably missing from a set of texts when we might expect their presence, or which words are used with surprisingly high frequency when we wouldn’t expect them?

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