Thinking about my new Data Visualization module next semester I came across
Nicholas Rougeux who likes to visualise books in patterns without words. I thought I'd check out a few books available at the
Gutenberg Project. I selected four classic books:
- "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens
- "Ulysses" by James Joyce
- "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
- "The Illiad" by Homer
I stripped out all words, letters and numbers. I also remove square brackets and hyphens. All that was left were punctuation symbols. Each book looks very different. Tolstoy uses a lot more quotation marks than the others. Dickens uses a lot of exclamation marks, as does Joyce - the latter's work seems to be mostly commas and full stops. Joyce's last chapter (18) in Ulysses famously has no punctuation marks at all - so this does not feature in the stripped down version. Homer's Illiad looks the simplest of the lot.
It's just a different, and meaningless, way to visualise text. I'm sure it would be possible to identify someone's work based their punctuation patterns if for example a long lost text was found reputed to be from a famous author. There's no hidden meaning from any of this work - just a different way of looking at things.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4SfRW9rYNfayUqJXqOAdPATZuIkJNYuJX1WEoADZXqursSPf_HY9dMUQSUYSBJQfUvalP8lnAi0zyidkMn22CL07g8jVgLkkBfmJwUMh4OgHpNTsEagGzLLHQyvbL1nDFHRA28kOXZA/s1600/Illiad.jpg) |
Illiad. |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAiUXVPxkbxYx-3oZZWSdIkt321cc0fRwv0uujYWsd1k9B72JxXI7Bpt31eKQJpa8-IZFym-WogzGv7Mk8cSgrG6FAmKoOnOzCWBVd9dk1NcFx5y5O01MoXFkPZ_N3gHHZJwZ64ChxF1M/s1600/TaleOfTwoCities.jpg) |
A Tale of Two Cities. |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdttCwI9266CNJ_ytoVUDIKmS5KE2Lu9AXj0Q86fmiDn1hyphenhyphenEgpfqL-4dn4IQKPkGfnLG6CD9wN_rK71ivMnCjOm_UD4NBSydDJOv2HZsxDODSjOcN31iJDPwlGiX4pyOepJwejsvEAm_0/s1600/Ulysses.jpg) |
Ullysses. |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNGx0bRwDnEeP4OsQhIeYrjHwJ_MJ3pIJLu4eA1a3m5We_YlQ_fIv3dKvsocU4ahyphenhyphenrbtZjJfa2QPUc5rdbPYQdTLjJzo6VcdmO3BAi6X4FtAkkMZsJ406a3p5pGczVldJcCuOPlxgwaC0/s1600/WarAndPeace.jpg) |
War and Peace. |
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