Review of 5 Online Services for Text Analysis

There are a number of online services for text analysis available to Internet users. The right one for your needs will depend on the kinds of features which are most important to you. Before choosing a particular service, take the time to review several options to ensure you select the one which is the best fit for your writing needs.

Online-Utility.org

Online-Utility.org is a free text analysis tool which allows users to obtain information about the most frequent phrases and frequencies of words uses in a particular block of text. Use it for English and foreign language texts. It will also provide a word count, the number of characters, sentences and syllables in the analyzed text.

To use this online service, simply copy and paste the passage into the text box provided on the site. You can also provide a URL to be checked if you wish. Click on “Process Text” to start the analysis.

UsingEnglish.com

The UsingEngish.com site has a basic version and a premium version that has more features for members. The free version will provide you with a word count, the number of sentences, and the average number of words used in each sentence in your block of text. It will also give you statistics on the number of unique words in your writing, the lexical density, and the Gunning Fog readability index.

The Gunning Fog index measures the average number of words used in each sentence, as well as the average number of long words per sentence. It is used to determine the level of education required to interpret a particular text.

To use the site, write or cut and paste the text to be analyzed into the text box. The analyzer can accept a text block of up to 10,000 characters.

Members who register on the site can gain access to extra content, including English online tests and quizzes, and advances text analyzer, a reference list of irregular verbs, word games, articles, teacher handouts, and the site’s forum.

Lawrence Anthony: AntWordProfiler

AntWordProfiler is a free online tool. It will check each word in a document and generate the base form for you, as well as a list of possible related words. The report will also list statistics and frequency data and list word types. You can process each file separately or do a group of files in a batch to save time.

If you find you get into a rut using the same words or groups of words often, this tool may help you see pattens in your writing you may need to correct. Often, we are not aware that we are relying on the same group of familiar words all the time and we need to branch out and shake things up a bit.  Let the AntWordProfiler perform an analysis to determine whether this is the case with your writing to see if you need to make some changes.

Crawdad Desktop

Crawdad Desktop is used by researchers who are doing quantitative analysis. This desktop content analysis software is powerful, yet easy to use. It is flexible enough to be used for web sites, press releases, e-mails, annual reports, papers and articles.

It can be used to browse text, compare two texts, or perform a full search of a particular text. Use it to perform word influence values or time series analysis on statistical packages. This online program has a lot of flexibility for users.

Voyant

Voyant is a website which promises to allow users to see through their text. Users simply copy and paste their text into a box on the site and hit “Reveal.” The site will accept text in a variety of formats, including html, plain text, MS Word, PDF, RTF, and XML. It will also allow users to upload files or copy and paste a URL onto the site for analysis.

The analysis will show a summary of the texts indexed. Users have the option of sorting results by specific words and exporting the results. The results are searchable and sortable. You can also choose to display keywords in context for selected words in each document you have chosen to analyze.

These 5 online services for text analysis are all different in the type of information they can provide to users. To get the best possible result from this type of service, take the time to read through the introductory information on the website before signing up or tying the service. Then you will know what to expect from each one.

You will probably want to try a few scans before you decide whether one is right for your needs or not. It’s very difficult to make that kind of decision if you only have a small sample for the online service to analyze.