Distant Reader - subject-shorthand-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-25 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 4 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 27,339 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 6,834 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 93. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

write, may, word, words, place, god, christ, must, will, letters, come, one, hand, short, first, left, like, vowels, art, see, world, letter, text, writing, end, together, two, yet, set, fig, consonants, observe, joyned, examples, many, former, shall, vowel, consonant, beginning, written, example, vowell, next, way, table, tcp, character, long, rules

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Tachygraphy the most exact and compendious methode of short and swift writing that hath ever yet beene published by any / composed by Thomas Shelton ... ; approoved by both unyversities., Short-hand yet shorter: or, The art of short-writing advanced in a more swift, easie, regular, and natural method than hitherto Whereby the former difficulties in placing the vowels are removed; they, the dipthongs and consonants, further contracted; the particles, pronouns, degrees of comparison, persons, moods, tenses, contrarieties, repetitions, sentences negative and interrogatory, are shortned. The rules are plain, easie to be remembred and applied to any other short-hand, that such as have learned other authors may have hence a very considerable help to write more swiftly without altering their foundation. By George Ridpath., and Semography, or, Short and swift writing invented and composed for the benefit of others by the author hereof, William Cartwright, and is now set forth and published by his nephew, Ieremiah Rich, immediate next to the authour, deceased ....

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

come together, see fig, english books, early english, books online, learner may, double consonants, long words, two vowels, words may, first letter, vowels place, page images, swift writing, joyned together, vowels come, may observe, text creation, creation partnership, upper corner, lower corner, will easily, went away, word may, following word, like sound, may bee, copper plate, next letter, right hand, passive signification, jesus christ, last syllable, one word, two consonants, many words, former vowell, next place, many times, thomas shelton, former rules, words written, single vowels, financial support, pfs batch, christ went, text transcribed, creative commons, former difficulties, tcp schema

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Short writing, began by nature compliated [sic] by art manifesting the irregularity of placing the artificial before the natural of symbolical contractions: and proposing a method more suited to sense, and more fully answering y [sic] requisited of a compleat character in the shortning both of words and sentences. Invented, taught & published with plain directions examples and a specimen of the writing by Laurence Steel Tachygraphy the most exact and compendious methode of short and swift writing that hath ever yet beene published by any / composed by Thomas Shelton ... ; approoved by both unyversities., and Short-hand yet shorter: or, The art of short-writing advanced in a more swift, easie, regular, and natural method than hitherto Whereby the former difficulties in placing the vowels are removed; they, the dipthongs and consonants, further contracted; the particles, pronouns, degrees of comparison, persons, moods, tenses, contrarieties, repetitions, sentences negative and interrogatory, are shortned. The rules are plain, easie to be remembred and applied to any other short-hand, that such as have learned other authors may have hence a very considerable help to write more swiftly without altering their foundation. By George Ridpath..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

word, god, write, christ, art, world, vowel, tcp, sentences, place, person, letters, examples, alphabet

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be write, and Semography, or, Short and swift writing invented and composed for the benefit of others by the author hereof, William Cartwright, and is now set forth and published by his nephew, Ieremiah Rich, immediate next to the authour, deceased ... is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

word, words, place, hand, letters, art, writing, letter, text, fig, consonants, way, end, vowels, table, heart, beginning, vowell, characters, write, time, e, places, others, use, rules, person, marks, example, consonant, part, mark, o, manner, man, men, memory, l, world, sound, sentences, middle, things, corner, works, tittle, character, books, prick, texts

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

be, is, write, are, have, come, left, do, see, observe, set, joyned, being, written, was, make, following, put, comes, were, take, been, begin, let, read, said, had, expressed, writ, made, go, express, went, say, did, according, published, learned, end, note, leave, enter, encoded, used, stand, spared, look, composed, called, am

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

christ, god, c., e, y, world, vowel, lord, tcp, examples, vowels, thou, alphabet, b., heaven, learner, chap, u, m, letters, b, 〉, s, hath, character, 〈, ◊, english, t, persons, f, method, letter, consonant, church, text, example, c, d, book, verb, short, sentences, r, q, mood, man, london, k, joyn

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, i, you, them, they, he, we, their, your, his, my, him, me, thy, our, its, us, themselves, one, himself, u, theirs, wh, thee, s, yt, yours, y, wr, th, sha''nt, ndl, mine, mb, kn, fa, briefnesse

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, such, same, short, first, former, many, like, more, next, little, long, last, double, much, great, early, right, english, whole, lower, good, own, latter, swift, small, most, several, false, able, upper, second, natural, due, common, true, proper, present, large, corrupt, available, sufficient, single, plain, exprest, exact, compendious, usefull, textual, superfluous

thus, not, out, so, then, together, as, more, also, therefore, here, down, yet, sometimes, now, up, only, very, first, just, most, easily, over, often, never, onely, even, before, long, well, too, online, off, next, much, likewise, in, fully, ever, else, away, always, alone, all, readily, further, especially, consequently, above, thereof

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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