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Importing words from a text list

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the point of it

You might want a word list based on some data you have obtained in the form of a list, but whose original texts you do not have access to.

 

requirements

Your text file can be in any language (select this before you make the list), and can be in Unicode or ASCII or ANSI, plain text.

<Tab> characters are expected to separate the columns of data. Decimal points and commas will be ignored. Words will have leading or trailing spaces trimmed off. The words do not need to be in frequency or alphabetical order. You need at least a column with words and another with a number representing each word's frequency.

 

example

 

; My word list for test purposes.

 

THIS

67,543

IT

33,218

WILL

2,978

BE

5,679

COMPLETE

45

AND

99,345

UTTER

54

RUBBISH

99

IS

55,678

THE

678,965

 

 

You should get results like these.

 

importing text into wordlist results

 

Statistics are calculated in the simplest possible way: the word-lengths (plus mean and standard deviation), and the number of types and tokens. Most procedures need to know the total number of running words (tokens) and the number of different word types so you should manage to use the word-list in KeyWords etc.

 

The total is computed by adding the frequencies of each word-type (67543+33218+2978 etc. in the example above).

Optionally, a line can start \TOTAL=\ and contain a numerical total, eg.

\TOTAL=\        299981

In this case the total number of tokens will be assumed to be 299981, instead.

 

how to do it

When you choose the New menu option (WSImage_324_GetStarted_24) in WordList you get a window offering three tabs: a Main tab for most usual purposes,

 

importing text into wordlist

 

one for Detailed Consistency, and another (Advanced) for creating a word list using a plain text file.

 

Set the word column and frequency column appropriately according to the tabs in each line. (Column 1 assumes that the word comes first before any tabs; in the case of CREA's Spanish word-list there is a column for ranking so the word and frequency columns would need to be 2 and 3 respectively.)

 

Choose your .txt file(s) and a suitable folder to save to, add any notes you wish, and press create word list(s) now.