Life in a Single Word

The Internet has enabled us to reach out further than we have been able to do so in the past. Now, we are able to get news from someone on the front line via a cell phone and a connection to a social site. Via those same social sites and the many blogs, we can see trends of the masses and thoughts of the individual. As well, instead of a quick conversation in passing and not know why a friend made a reference they did, we are now able to see how thoughts are formed and the influences simple words have on the outcome of our journeys.

Chris Harrison has taken information available from many sources, not the least all the data Google collects and has build a series of graphics showing the path in single words between two opposite words. I would encourage you to take the time to visit the site to understand the full scope of the collection and analyzing of the words. To give you a quick idea that the reporting of the data was no easy task:

“To better achieve a even distribution, I normalized the frequencies of bigrams based on total primary term frequency. So, for example, in the case of war vs. peace, there are 81,839,381 bigrams starting with war and 31,263,375 bigrams starting with peace. If I render the spectrum without normalization, it ends up lopsided toward war (since the usage totals are so much higher). To compensate, I scale down all of war’s bigrams so that the overall frequencies are even.“

The original project was called Word Spectrum, here is a low resolution example of one of the many graphics available. Each graphic on Chris’s site are done as a high def PDF so you can download and examine at your leisure.

As the process continues, Chris rethought the layout of the words and the path of single words leading from one end of a though to the opposite. These are called Word Associations. Again, available to view online or download as PDFs.

There are many words of inspiration that come to mind when your writing a note to someone. A quick note or a card can motivate a person to be their best. While a word describes the message you want to send, a card with COURAGE on it has limited impact. Some people will get it, but most need a bit more to align with.

The folks at Healthful Changes have done a nice job of aligning quotes from famous people throughout history to match the Words of Inspiration. A card with one of these quotes may have more of a dramatic impact. You will still know the word that describes the emotion your sending with your message, the reader will understand what your trying to say.

Some of the words expanded with quotes include:
WISDOM
THOUGHTS
SUCCESS
RELATIONSHIPS
POTENTIAL
LEARNING
HOPE
FAITH
ADVERSITY

If you didn’t know, like I didn’t know, there is a more technical side to rhyming words. Especially when it is in a poem where readers spend more time analyzing ever word. I will list out some greast resources below, but to start, here is what makes up different kinds of rhyming words:

End Rhymes (blue/shoe)

Last Syllable Rhymes (timber/harbor)

Double Rhymes (conviction/prediction)

Triple Rhymes (frightening/brightening)

Beginning Rhymes (physics/fizzle)

First Syllable Rhymes (carrot/caring)

rhymer.com offers a online search engine for words via their 93,000-word dictionary. They also offer a desktop version of their software for faster reference.

rhyme.poetry.com offers a search engine for rhyming words with a few extras – Organize results by syllables or letters and can include phrases.

A post about rhyming words wouldn’t be complete without a mention of words that can’t be rhymed. Most everyone has heard of Orange and Silver. There is actually quite a list of words over at “List of English words without rhymes”. This page is good to glance at before spend a weekend trying to finish of your poem where you need something that matches up to ‘wolf’ only to find out that there is such word.

Nothing too serious going on here, it’s all for fun!

Looking around Flickr today, I was overjoyed to discover Raham has taken on the challenge to have a Flickr area of Single Word images. He has 356 images in the group currently, and looks to be growing. While it’s nothing more than a bunch of pictures of words found everywhere in the world, that is what makes it fun!

From Raham about adding to the collection:
The Purpose Of This Group

To collect a large database of photographed single words.
Images of photographed words (not text created with a graphics program, nor screen-captures).

Rules

Images must be of a SINGLE word, cropped so that word fills the image.

There are things that I find that are must see items. Most of those, I would personally endorse saying that you should visit. This particular item I found interesting and “worth a mention”. The site allows you to pick a word that best describes your Web site and have that word associated to your site. There are over 7,000 words assigned.

“The Big Word Project has been set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two Masters students from Northern Ireland, who are exploring what different words mean to different people. The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.”

The creators do charge for that single word association which gives me mixed feelings. I can see someone in a school or for a fun project doing this for free. I don’t have an issue with anyone making money and these folks have a effective simplistic site that makes it unique… you decide. Even if you don’t ‘buy’ your word, it’s a site to visit when looking for one word associated with one site.

There is one word that sticks with you forever. I guess you could change that word, but generally speaking, it is where you are. That of course is your name… let’s go with your first name. For many people, that first name builds an image in a person’s mind before they meet you. Most likely they have met a Sally before so they have a quick picture of ‘Sally’ before the first time your paths cross. Maybe, your name will create a new impression that will erase the previous Sally for future first encounters.

While most names are given before a child has a personality or more often before they are even born. Not so much with a pet. Few folks have a name in mind and then search for a pet to match that. Most pet names are descriptive of that pet while a person’s first name is usually a relative or follows a rule like “this name should be hard to shorten into something embarrassing” .

For pet, most often a Cat or Dog, the name may just hit you when you first meet. If that doesn’t happen, here is a great site with many pet names. What I particularly enjoyed is that the site explains where the name came from, what it might mean and most often the sex of the pet it is used with. Fun to look through even if your not having a new family addition.

A fun project we had last week was to write a story that included other authors that we have never met and are not within two states away. At first I thought this meant we would be passing bits of text back and forth, a team member showed me that we would be doing this over EtherPad.

If you have not visited it, EtherPad.com is a simple concept allowing many people to collaborate on a single document in real time. I’m having a hard time being very casual about how exciting it was for us to see our work come together using such easy tools.We played with limiting how many words each person got to add and again without any restrictions to see how well the document came together.

The service is free and no sign up is required. While we were using it in a business project enviroment, what a great site for kids in education…

There are many types of ‘words’ people put on their walls to add atmosphere to an area. In offices they are usually words of inspiration or encouragement. In the house, these are generally placed on a shelf with books and nick knacks or hung on the wall. A single word that enforces the mood of the room.

We have been keeping an eye out for the right words to put on the wall in our home office. We have found a few at the local hobby supply shops, usually these are basic white on the rougher side to encourage your to spice them up with color to match the room.

Last week we took the plunge for a simple one we found at Current. We liked the font the maker had chosen and thought it matched the mood of the word quite nicely. For now it is being used as supplied, in white, but soon will be painted in a contrasting color to the wall it’s on. This is a picture from Current and not the actual one we have due to the white on a white wall just didn’t show well in the photos we took.

Available at Current – Dream Wall Word measures 6 3/4″ x 22″