Collocation Based Text Editor/Analyser

Use this text editor to speed up your writing, find suitable collocates, and analyse texts.

This application may take a little time to load, particularly on slow connections. Unfortunately, it doesn't currently work on mobile devices. It needs a conventional keyboard.

This is a very simple text editor which allows you to view possible collocates as you write. The suggestions are based purely on the probability of one word following another; they take no account of syntax or context.

To start, type a word and press the space bar. If your word is an English word and not a rare one, you'll be provided with a scrollable list of suggestions. This list scrolls faster if the mouse is positioned towards the right and slower towards the left. Once the word you choose is in the very centre of the scroll box, clicking the black button will place the chosen word in your text. Selecting a word will also bring up the suggestions. You can drag the scroll box around but when you click or select in the text it will always appear near to the cursor or the selected text.

The scroll box provides you with 100 possible collocations but you can find more by typing the first letter of a word. You'll then be provided with collocations which begin with that letter, some of which may not have appeared in the original 100 word list. You can further refine the list by typing the second letter, and so on.

You can analyse your own text or paste in another text for analysis. Once you have pasted, click in the text to bring up the analyse button and then click it. This analysis provides a visual display of how strong a collocate each following word is. A darker colouring means a stronger collocate. You will also be provided with a collocation score. The first figure gives an accumulative measure of how strong the collocates are for each of the words for which following collocates are possible (words at the end of a sentence or before a comma, for example, don't have a following collocate). The second figure gives a measure of how strong the collocates are divide by the total number of words. This number will always be lower than the first but it will be higher in texts with longer sentences than those with shorter ones.

You shouldn't read too much into these scores, but in general texts written by students of English at a lower level tend to have lower scores because of their lower vocabulary levels and poorer understanding of collocation. Different types of texts also score differently. A simple expositorySee the glossary definition text written by an academic for a non specialist reader will score higher than a text written for comic effect or a specialist text containing specialist terminology or data. Specialist texts adopting particular styles (such as poetry) may score less because of their shorter sentences or because of their more imaginative use of language.

The save button puts a plain text copy or your text in your downloads folder. You can then save this to any other text editor. Alternatively you can just copy and paste the text into the text editor of your choice. Currently, this editor will not work on a touchscreen (mobile) device; you need a traditional keyboard.

To quickly find suitable alternative words in your writing without using a dictionary or a thesaurus.
To check your writing - a low score may mean that some of the words you have used are unsuitable in that particular context.
To help with proofreading a text.
To check a translation (maybe your translation of a phrase isn't current idiomatic English).
To help write a text quickly.
To help you concentrate on your ideas and the structure of your writing rather than the vocabulary.