Questions

WordItOut

What is a word cloud? What are word clouds for? Who made this website?

Using a word cloud

What am I allowed to do with a word cloud on WordItOut?

Word clouds are licensed under a Creative Commons Licence, specifically an Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivative Works Creative Commons Licence (4.0). That’s quite hard to say out loud.

This means that if it’s just for your own, personal use, then you can do lots of things, such as embedding the word cloud on your own website or blog. If you do this, we only ask that you give credit to WordItOut and include a link to our website or the word cloud. For the full details, see the Creative Commons Licence.

Zazzle

I have a question about a word cloud I bought with Zazzle as a T-shirt, mug, ...

All questions should go directly to Zazzle, as they manufacture the items, and also deal with returns, shipping and so on. You can contact Zazzle here. WordItOut is only responsible for generating the images that Zazzle uses for printing.

Printing

How do I print a word cloud?

Your web browser (the software you’re using now to access the internet) can print the word clouds, but will probably remove some of the colours. We recommend you to download the word cloud as an image and then print it.

Saving

Can I save the word cloud as an image?

Yes you can! First you need to save the word cloud on WordItOut (no sign-up, only requires your email address -and no spam too!). Then click on the ‘Download’ button just below the word cloud to save your own copy to your computer. However, if you want to put a word cloud on your own website, you don’t need to do this, you can embed the word cloud, which will automatically resize as well. See the following section.

Some languages are not supported, please see this section.

Embedding

How does embedding work?

To embed a word cloud, you need to copy the html code provided and paste it into your own (non-commercial) website. The word cloud will grow or shrink to fit the space you’ve put it in. Don’t forget that you need to mention WordItOut and put a link back to our website (we’ve provided some code as an example, you can customise if you wish).

How can I change the size of my embedded word cloud?

In the code, you will see the following: <div style='width:auto;height:auto;'>. You can simply change the auto (for either the height or width) to a number of pixels or a percentage e.g. 400px or 50%

I've embedded the code, where's the word cloud?

See this section.

Making a word cloud

Text input

Is there a limit to how much text I can put in?

In theory no, but your computer may slow down a little for very large texts, depending on its abilities and the type of web browser you’re using. We recommend Firefox.

Can I make multi-word phrases?

Yes you can! By default, the tilde “~” and underscore “_” are replaced with a non-breaking space which will keep words together. You can also add other characters to do the same thing.

Another option is to modify how a word is displayed on the word list, perhaps adding a space or other characters, and you can remove other words to prevent them from showing twice.

We do not automatically check to see if there are multi-word phrases: this is possible but would really slow down the time to generate a word cloud.

Can I put symbols in a word cloud?

By default, characters and symbols are filtered from the source text. To stop this, click on ‘Settings’ for the source and clear the textbox with the characters to be removed.

Privacy

See our Privacy and Cookie Policy for full details.

Why do you need my email address to save a word cloud?

We need your email address to make sure that you’re a human. We will only send you important links and information on how to share and manage your new word cloud.

Your details will never be given to anybody else or used for anything not related to WordItOut. We hate spam and other nasty things too, so we will never use your email address for these bad things!

By using just an email address, you don’t need to choose a username and remember another password, just use your emails as you always do!

How can I stop my word cloud from being seen by the public?

Easy. When you save your word cloud, choose the ‘Private’ sharing option. This way, we’ll give you an almost impossible to guess link for your word cloud. Then, you can share this word cloud only with the people you choose to give it to. You can even set this option later, or change the private link from your Secret Link that we will email to you.

Is WordItOut secure enough for confidential documents?

As long as you don’t save the word cloud, nothing will leave your computer. If you save one, then only the data necessary to reconstruct the word cloud and some settings are sent but that’s all: the original text isn’t even sent to our servers.

Language support

Which languages does WordItOut work with?

Every language should work, even if the default set up is for English.

When making a word cloud, you are able to remove any common words or characters yourself, either from the original source settings or by directly editing the word list. Word breaks are simply white space, and any alternative word-breaking characters could be added to the list of punctuation to be removed, which will subsequently become white space.

Please note that for certain languages, not all of the fonts will appear correctly.
See this section for more information.

Inappropriate content

Do you filter out rude words?

Word clouds containing common rude English words do not appear in the galleries on the Discover page. When removed, you will have an option to allow such word clouds to appear, as long as you confirm that you are old enough to do so. See our blog post for more information.

JavaScript is required for filtering to work. See this section for more information about JavaScript.

Current filter settings:

I'd like to use your website for educational purposes. How can I prevent the students from finding word clouds with adult content?

As we wrote above, we do filter word clouds by default anyway. However, individuals can decide to view them. If you want a stronger control, please see your IT administrator and ask them to block the pages you don’t want students to see. Most networks have such a function.

How can I report an inappropriate word cloud?

If you find a word cloud that you believe is not allowed according to our Terms of Use, for example with offensive content or disclosing your personal information, please inform us using the form below and include a link to the word cloud.

Developers

Am I allowed to use your code for my own projects?

Do you have an API (Application Programming Interface)?

We are considering opening up the source code to external developers, but we’re very busy at the moment and this is not currently a priority. So for now, no, you are not allowed to use our software (apart from on this Website) and we don’t have an external API.

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