Capturing ME/CFS In A Wordle

After reading a blog-post by Zemalf on how to create free images for your blog with Wordle I decided to try to capture ME/CFS in a Wordle.

A lot of ME/CFS patients have to educate their doctors on this disease, with mixed results. Just imagine how difficult it is to explain this disease to the average person and to raise public awareness. Maybe a Wordle can help, after all isn’t a picture worth a thousand words.

Wordle

The word-cloud is based on my own experience with ME/CFS and with some help from the sites listed in the ‘Resources’-section below, because I do not have all the symptoms listed. The list of keywords is far from complete, but at a certain moment I decided that it was enough. As you will see; the cloud contains more than just symptoms; causes, treatments, everyday problems and prejudice, but I have excluded the names of persons and organizations. I do not mention the WPI, but it’s there in the keywords hope, research, science, real, XMRV, XAND, … I have not included the names of Reeves, Wesley, and their Belgian counterpart Van Houdenhove, but they are in there via the keywords psychobabble, psychosocial, incompetence, disbelief, …

How to Create a Wordle

It is really easy to create a Wordle. The difficult part is collecting the keywords for the word-cloud. To make it easier for you, I have made my list of keywords available for download. The zip-file contains two text-files: basic.txt and advanced.txt. You can use the contents of these files as is to create your own Wordle or you can add or remove some keywords. The difference between the two files is that in the advanced.txt the keywords are weighted, which means that some words will be displayed larger than others in the word-cloud.

Basic Wordle

Use the basic.txt to create a default Wordle.

1. Go to Wordle – Create.
2. Copy/paste the contents of the basic.txt file into the first input field ‘Paste in a bunch of text’
3. Click on the ‘Go’-button.
4. Modify the ‘Font’, ‘Layout’ and ‘Color’ settings to your liking.
5. Take a screenshot (on Windows computers this is done by pressing the ‘Print Scrn’ or ‘Print Screen’ key).
6. Crop the image using your favorite graphic software (Mac: Preview, iPhoto, GIMP | Windows: GIMP, Adobe Photoshop, …)

Advanced Wordle

Use the advanced.txt to create an advanced Wordle.

1. Go to Wordle – Advanced Tools.
2. Copy/paste the contents of the advanced.txt file into the first input field ‘Paste weighted words or phrases here’.
3. Click on the ‘Go’-button.
4. Modify the ‘Font’, ‘Layout’ and ‘Color’ settings to your liking.
5. Take a screenshot (on Windows computers this is done by pressing the ‘Print Scrn’ or ‘Print Screen’ key).
6. Crop the image using your favorite graphic software (Mac: Preview, iPhoto, GIMP | Windows: GIMP, Adobe Photoshop, …)

Have fun! Feel free to add a link to your blog or website with a ME/CFS Wordle in the comments section.

Resources

• About.com – Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue
• NAME-US.org – ME/CFS Symptoms List
• ME/CFS Australia – Symptoms of ME/CFS
• WAMCARE – Worldwide Association for ME/CFS Awareness and Research
• Wikipedia – Chronic fatigue syndrome
• Wordle – Beautiful Word Clouds
• Zemalf – Create Free Images For Your Blog With Wordle

Tagged as: Awareness, symptoms, wordle