Wordle and Things

So this is what the content of my blog looks like when it has been 'wordled'.  On the whole it is what I expected.  Phone has come up a lot -  of course! Bibliography and referencing - yep; I am a study skills mentor so I am not surprised that these words have cropped up.  Other key words: Excel; Word; Function; Writing; Microsoft and Macintosh.  Again, all these make sense considering the purpose of this blog.

However, I am concerned with presence of one particular word on my wordle: Things. What are 'things'? Can I have a slice of vague to go with my imprecision please? This is a word I tell my students not to use in essays. "Be specific.  Instead of saying 'like the Olympics and things' say 'such as the Olympics and other sporting events'"

Care for a slice of vague?
(photo: my own)

I was very curious to see where I have used this offending word, and it's not as bad as I first thought.  All but one of the total uses were on my Microsoft and Me post which was kind-of-intentionally-foggy since nobody really wants to know the specific uses I have for spreadsheets and formulas (do you??).

Going through this process made me think about how my students can benefit from this. What if I get my students to do wordles of their essays?  They can find out if they repeat the same words over and over and make suitable adjustments; pick out words that have no place in academic text (like things, ahem) and get a nice overview of the keywords used. Brilliant!