Here’s a nifty little thing.

It’s a “tag cloud”, as the hep kids call them these days, that “shows the popularity, frequency, and trends in the usages of words within speeches, official documents, declarations, and letters written by the Presidents of the US between 1776 – 2006.” The bigger the size of the word as it appears in the cloud, the more often it was used and the more emphasis was placed on it. Move the little slider at the top back and forth on the timeline and see what words pop out for the different presidents, and even how those decisions changed within the term of that president’s service.