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I would like to get a better picture of a manuscript I've written, especially in regards to word usage patterns and potentially overused terms.

I'm curious whether anyone can recommend a document analysis tool.

Specifically, is there a program that takes a Microsoft Word document and produces a spreadsheet of all the words contained in the document and the number of times the word appears?

e.g.

cat 23

said 15

jumped 12

dog 7

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  • I'll edit to clarify intent. I've seen other discussion regarding writing tools, such as writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2050, writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1854 and writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1970
    – Cliff Hangerson Page
    Mar 18, 2011 at 17:50
  • yes, that helps some. A document analysis tool doesn't have to have a writing focus is all I was thinking.
    – justkt
    Mar 18, 2011 at 17:52
  • I am also interested in upcoming answers. Good question.
    – Nerevar
    Mar 18, 2011 at 18:05
  • Writing a program to count the instances of words in a text file was a programming project I had in college! Sorry, just had to jump in with that :P. But it should be fairly simple for programmers to implement or write - if none of the programs give you the kind of output you want I'd be happy to try to help?
    – tryin
    May 31, 2019 at 8:20

4 Answers 4

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Bing search for word frequency gets these two promising programs. Not for Word documents, but that's not a huge problem since you can save as text or copy-paste.

http://wordfrequencycounter.com/

Another: http://www.primitivezone.com/primitive-word-counter.html

I'm actually writing a writing app for Windows now. It'd be pretty easy to add frequency in as a tool... Hmm.

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The writing program yWriter has this function. yWriter is basically a downgraded version of Scrivener for Windows. It allows you to create multiple scenes and rearrange them easily. It will also analyze those scenes or the entire document for word usage, word goal, etc.

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  • thank you! That works like a charm! Wow, as if I needed another reason to love Scrivener. I should have RTFM more thoroughly.
    – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
    Mar 18, 2011 at 20:25
  • Scrivener has the same feature? Awesome!
    – Ralph Gallagher
    Mar 18, 2011 at 20:33
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    Project --> Text Statistics. Gives you exactly the list Jen is looking for. I had no idea I used "the" over two thousand times. :)
    – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
    Mar 18, 2011 at 23:44
  • Squeeee! I <3 Scrivener! I'm so glad they came out with a Windows version.
    – Ralph Gallagher
    Mar 19, 2011 at 1:23
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This isn't precisely what you're looking for, but it's interesting:

http://www.wordle.net/

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Scrivener, a program by literature and latte, will help with this. This is just one of the features--it's super-advanced and a complete lifesaver for anyone writing anything. I use it for scripts and novels, and sometimes just for its organization and fullscreen for my papers. It's amazing. Free trial lasts a while, but it's always in beta so you can usually get it w/o paying :) scrivener: www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

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