A word cloud turns a pile of words into one picture: the words that matter most are drawn largest. It is one of the quickest charts to make and one of the easiest to misread. This guide gives you eight word cloud examples, from classroom vocabulary to survey answers, a famous speech and brand values. Each one opens in our word cloud tool with its words filled in, so you can swap in your own. After the examples you will find what a word cloud can and cannot tell you, and the same data drawn as a bar chart for comparison.
What a Word Cloud Shows
According to Wikipedia, a tag cloud, also known as a word cloud, is a visual representation of text data in which the importance of each word is shown with font size or color. When the cloud is built from one text, Wikipedia calls it a text cloud: a picture of word frequency, the number of times each word appears.
So every word cloud starts from a list of words with a number beside each one. The number can come from two places.
- Counting. You paste a text, and the tool counts how often each word appears.
- Weights you supply. You type the words and give each a number yourself: votes, a rating, or simply how important you think it is.
The examples below are split the same way, because the two kinds are read differently.
How Size Is Set
In our tool, the word with the largest number gets the largest type, the word with the smallest number gets the smallest, and the rest fall in between. That means size shows rank and rough distance, not an exact ratio. A word drawn twice as tall was not necessarily used twice as often. Keep this in mind for every example.
Where Word Clouds Came From
Wikipedia traces the form to the early 2000s. It says the first tag clouds on a high-profile website were on the photo sharing site Flickr in 2004, where they showed which keyword tags were used most. The article describes a decline in their use for website navigation after that, and then a second wave of tools that used the same picture to visualize ordinary text. That second use is the one this guide is about.
Word Cloud Examples From a List of Weights
In these four examples, a person chose the words and the numbers. They are the best choice for teaching and for anything that was voted on. All four use sample data.
Example 1: Classroom Vocabulary
A teacher lists the key terms of a unit and gives the most important ones the highest weights.
Vocabulary for a unit on the water cycle. The three processes the unit is built on, evaporation, condensation and precipitation, carry the highest weights. Sample data.
Show the data
| Word | Weight |
|---|---|
| evaporation | 10 |
| condensation | 9 |
| precipitation | 9 |
| runoff | 6 |
| groundwater | 5 |
| vapor | 5 |
| cloud | 4 |
| river | 3 |
| ocean | 3 |
| glacier | 2 |
| humidity | 2 |
| dew | 1 |
What to copy: keep the list short, 10 to 15 words, and decide the weights before you draw. Here the weights run from 10 for evaporation down to 1 for dew. Students can see what to study first without reading a page of notes.
Example 2: A Class Survey
Ask one question, count the answers, and the counts become the weights.
What a class does after school, from 49 votes. Soccer leads with 9, and reading and gaming are tied at 7. Sample data.
Show the data
| Word | Weight |
|---|---|
| soccer | 9 |
| reading | 7 |
| gaming | 7 |
| drawing | 6 |
| music | 5 |
| swimming | 4 |
| baking | 3 |
| chess | 2 |
| skating | 2 |
| coding | 2 |
| dance | 1 |
| hiking | 1 |
What to copy: group the answers first. If five students write “football” and four write “soccer”, decide whether that is one word or two before you count. The cloud will not decide for you.
Example 3: Brand or Team Values
A team votes on the words that should describe their work. The winners are drawn largest.
Ten brand values weighted by a team vote, in uppercase and a rectangle shape. Honest got 10 points, and local and fresh got 8 each. Sample data.
Show the data
| Word | Weight |
|---|---|
| honest | 10 |
| local | 8 |
| fresh | 8 |
| friendly | 6 |
| simple | 5 |
| fair | 4 |
| careful | 3 |
| warm | 3 |
| curious | 2 |
| patient | 2 |
What to copy: ten words is plenty. This example sets Letter case to UPPERCASE and Shape to Rectangle, which suits a slide or a poster. The vote, not the designer, decides which word is biggest.
Example 4: Character Traits for a Book Report
For a book report, list a character’s traits and weight each one by how many scenes support it.
Traits of Mara, the main character of an invented novel. Brave has a weight of 8 because eight scenes show it, and proud has a weight of 1. Sample data.
Show the data
| Word | Weight |
|---|---|
| brave | 8 |
| stubborn | 7 |
| loyal | 6 |
| curious | 5 |
| clever | 4 |
| lonely | 3 |
| kind | 3 |
| impatient | 2 |
| funny | 2 |
| proud | 1 |
What to copy: the weight is a claim you have to defend. If brave is the biggest word, the report should point to the scenes that prove it. The book and the character are made up for this example.
Word Cloud Examples From Pasted Text
In the next four examples nobody chose the numbers. The tool counted the words. Before you trust a cloud like this, you need to know how the counting works.
How Our Tool Counts Words
We read these rules from the tool’s code.
- Upper and lower case are merged. “Quiet” and “quiet” are one word.
- Common words are skipped when “Skip common words like the, and and of” is ticked. The list has a little over 200 English words, including pronouns and helper verbs.
- Numbers alone are skipped. A word with a hyphen or an apostrophe inside it stays whole.
- Different forms are not merged. “Dedicate” and “dedicated” are counted as two words. So are “book” and “books”.
- Only the top words are drawn. “Maximum words” sets how many, and ties are broken alphabetically.
Example 5: Open Survey Answers
Twelve short answers to the question “What do you like about the library?”, pasted as one block of text.
Words from 12 sample survey answers. Quiet and staff appear 5 times each, friendly and rooms 4 times, and books and kids 3 times. Sample data.
Show the data
The staff are friendly and the building is quiet. I like the quiet study rooms. Friendly staff, and the kids love story time. The books are easy to find and the staff always help. Quiet rooms and fast wifi. I come for the wifi and the study rooms. My kids love the events and the books. Longer hours would help, but the staff are great. Quiet, clean and friendly. The events for kids are the best part. Good books, quiet rooms, friendly staff. I wish the hours were longer on weekends.
What to copy: a cloud is a fast first look at open answers. It tells you that quiet, the staff and the rooms come up again and again. It does not tell you what people said about them. Two answers asked for longer hours, which is a complaint, and “hours” and “longer” sit in the cloud looking as cheerful as “friendly”. Read the answers too.
Example 6: A Famous Speech
This cloud is made from the full text of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in the version published by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School. We changed nothing except two double hyphens, which we replaced with commas so that the words on each side are counted separately.
The Gettysburg Address with common words left out. Nation appears 5 times and dedicated 4 times. Text from the Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
Show the data
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
What to notice: “nation” is the largest word, used 5 times, followed by “dedicated” with 4, then “dead”, “great” and “people” with 3 each. “Dedicate” appears twice more and is drawn as a separate, smaller word, because the tool does not merge word forms. Count them together and the idea of dedication appears 6 times, more than “nation”. A cloud can hide a theme by splitting it.
Wikipedia notes that word clouds have been widely used to show the topics of political speeches. They work for that because a speech repeats its key words on purpose.
Example 7: Workshop Feedback
Comment cards from a workshop, typed in as one text. This cloud sets Word direction to “Some vertical”.
Words from sample comment cards. Clear and examples appear 4 times each. Fast, practical, practice, slides and time appear 3 times each. Sample data.
Show the data
Great examples and clear slides. The examples were practical. Too fast in the second half. More time for questions please. Clear and practical, but too fast. I liked the hands-on practice. More practice, fewer slides. The pace was fast but the examples helped. Practical tips I can use on Monday. More time for practice and questions. Clear speaker, great examples. Slides were clear. Would like more breaks and more time.
What to notice: “fast” is in the cloud, and it looks like praise. In the cards it was a complaint: “too fast”. A word cloud drops the words around each word, so check the text before you report that people liked the pace.
Example 8: Skills in a Job Ad
Paste a job ad and see which words it repeats.
Words from a sample ad for an office coordinator. Six words are tied at 3 uses: communication, experience, manage, office, required and spreadsheet. Sample data.
Show the data
We are hiring an office coordinator. You will schedule meetings, manage calendars and order supplies. You will welcome visitors and answer the phone. Strong communication skills are required: clear writing, friendly communication with visitors and careful communication with vendors. You will manage invoices and track the budget in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheet skills are required, and experience with calendars and scheduling is a plus. You are organized, friendly and reliable. You will schedule travel, manage vendors and keep the office organized. Experience in an office is required. Writing and spreadsheet experience will be tested.
What to copy: job seekers use this to decide which skills to put first in a resume. Here there is no single winner. Six words are tied, and the cloud shows them at the same size. The ad is invented for this example.
How to Read a Word Cloud, and Its Limits
A word cloud is a sketch, not a measurement. Read it with these limits in mind.
What Size Does and Does Not Tell You
Size tells you which words come first and roughly how they rank. It does not give you the counts. In Example 5 you can see that “quiet” beats “books”, but not that the score is 5 to 3.
Long Words Look Bigger
A long word covers more of the picture than a short one in the same type size. In Example 1, “precipitation” would take far more room than “dew” even at the same weight. Wikipedia’s summary of usability studies says the same thing in research terms: large tags attract more attention than small ones, and the effect is influenced by the number of characters, the position and the neighboring tags.
Position and Color Carry No Meaning Here
In our tool, the largest word is placed first, near the middle, and the others are fitted around it wherever there is room. The colors cycle through the palette in order of rank. Neither one encodes data. That matters because, according to the same Wikipedia summary, tags in the middle of a cloud attract more attention than tags near the edges. The middle is where the eye goes, not where the most important fact must be.
People Scan, They Do Not Read
The same summary reports that users scan tag clouds instead of reading them, and that clouds give poor support when you are searching for one specific word unless it is very large. A cloud is good for a first impression and weak as a lookup table.
Context Is Lost
As Examples 5 and 7 showed, a cloud cannot tell “fast” from “too fast”, or a wish from a compliment. That caution is our own, from building these examples, not from a study.
The Same Data as a Bar Chart
Here are the 49 votes from Example 2 again, drawn as horizontal bars.
The after-school votes as a bar chart. Every count is readable, ties are obvious, and the order from soccer down to hiking needs no guessing. Sample data.
Show the data
| Category | Votes |
|---|---|
| soccer | 9 |
| reading | 7 |
| gaming | 7 |
| drawing | 6 |
| music | 5 |
| swimming | 4 |
| baking | 3 |
| chess | 2 |
| skating | 2 |
| coding | 2 |
| dance | 1 |
| hiking | 1 |
The bar chart answers questions the cloud cannot. How many voted for drawing? Six. Are reading and gaming tied? Yes, at 7. How far ahead is soccer? Two votes. If your readers need to compare, use bars. If they need a quick, friendly picture of what the list is about, the cloud does that better. Often the right answer is both: the cloud on the title slide and the bars on the next one. Our bar graph examples show more ways to draw counts, and the bar graph tool takes the same two columns.
More Word Cloud Ideas
If none of the eight fits, here are more ideas, grouped by who they are for. These are our suggestions.
Word Cloud Ideas for Students and Teachers
- The most used words in a poem, a chapter or a student’s own essay, to spot words that are overused.
- “One word for how this unit went” as an exit ticket, counted and shown the next day.
- Two clouds side by side, one for each of two speeches or two news articles on the same topic.
- A first-day “about me” cloud with hobbies and favorites.
Word Cloud Ideas for Work
- Product reviews for one item, to see which features come up.
- Support tickets from one week, to see what people ask about.
- Words from a mission statement, to check whether the words you think matter are the ones you wrote.
Turning Counts Into a Table First
For anything you will report, make the table before the picture. Our frequency table tool counts a list of answers, and the counts can go straight into the weighted list.
Shapes, Direction and Case
A few settings change the look without changing the data.
- Shape. Our tool offers Oval and Rectangle. It does not fill custom outlines such as a heart or an animal, so if you are looking for word cloud shapes of that kind, you will need a different tool.
- Word direction. Horizontal is the easiest to read. “Some vertical” turns some of the smaller words on their side and packs the cloud more tightly. “Tilted” angles some words. The largest word always stays horizontal.
- Letter case. Lowercase, as written, or UPPERCASE.
- Maximum words. The slider goes from 10 to 250. Fewer words leave more room for each one. For a slide, 20 to 30 is plenty.
- Shuffle the layout. Each press rearranges the same words. The sizes do not change, only the positions.
Make Your Own Word Cloud
Start from the examples above, or from this plain list of eight words with weights.
Open a starter word list with weights
In the word cloud tool, choose “Paste text” to have the words counted for you, or “Word list with weights” to set the numbers yourself. It runs in your browser, and you can download the result as a PNG or an SVG.
A word cloud is one of many chart types. To see where it sits next to bar charts, pie charts and the rest, read our guide to the types of graphs and charts.
Summary
A word cloud draws the most frequent or most heavily weighted words largest. The eight word cloud examples here cover both kinds: lists with weights you choose (vocabulary, a class survey, brand values, character traits) and text the tool counts (survey answers, a speech, feedback, a job ad). Use a cloud for a first impression. Check the text behind it, remember that size is not an exact count, and switch to a bar chart when the numbers matter.
Questions people ask
What is a word cloud example?
A common example is a cloud made from a speech: paste the text and the words used most often, such as nation in the Gettysburg Address, appear largest. Another is a class vocabulary cloud, where the teacher gives each term a weight. Both show at a glance which words matter most.
What are some ideas for a word cloud?
For class: unit vocabulary, character traits from a book, or favorite hobbies. For work: answers to an open survey question, workshop feedback, or the skills named in a job ad. For a brand: the values a team votes for. Any short list of words with counts or weights will do.
What are the disadvantages of using word clouds?
A word cloud hides the numbers, so you cannot tell how much more often one word appears than another. Long words look bigger than short ones at the same size. Context is lost, because each word stands alone. Wikipedia's summary of usability research adds that people scan clouds instead of reading them.
What is another name for a word cloud?
Tag cloud is the older name, from websites that showed their keyword tags this way. Wikipedia also lists text cloud for a cloud built from the word counts of one text, and weighted list as the design term. In everyday use, word cloud now covers all of them.
How do I create a word cloud?
Collect your words in one of two forms: a block of text, or a list of words with a number beside each. Paste either into our word cloud tool, pick how many words to show and the direction of the words, shuffle the layout until it looks right, and download the image.
Do people still use word clouds?
We found no usage figures, so we cannot give a number. Wikipedia describes a decline in tag clouds as a way to navigate websites among their early adopters, followed by a second wave of use for visualizing text. For a quick impression of a text they remain common. For exact comparison, a bar chart is better.
What are good word cloud examples for students?
Three that work in most classrooms: the key vocabulary of a unit with teacher-set weights, the character traits of someone in a book with a weight for how much evidence supports each trait, and a class survey such as favorite after-school activities. Each is in this guide with data you can change.
