Concgram List Builder (4) ©

Ways to make the lists shorter. 

When you make the lists using the automated concgram search functions there are a variety of ways to restrict the size of the resulting lists. What method(s) you choose depends on the outcome that you are seeking and the size of the file that you are using initially to create the lists.  Preferences are selected using the Concgram Preferences Dialog which pops up every time you select CONCGRAMS >> CREATE NEW CONCGRAM LIST >> USING ALL WORDS IN A TEXT.

The Concgram Preferences Dialog is shown in Figure 21 which gives the default settings.

Figure 21: the Concgram Preferences Dialog

This lists 3 basic ways of controlling list size:

• using an Exclusion List - this is a text file which is a list of words to be ignored. Words such as THE, OF, TO, AND etc occur very frequently and can be studied independently by means of an Inclusion List, but can first be listed in an Exclusion List. This will greatly reduce the size of the resulting list as these words will not be included in the concgrams. A sample exclusion list is shown in Figure 22 below.

• discarding matches with only 1 or 2 instances - if you drop single instance matches you can reduce the size of the list dramatically. Depending on your data file, single instance matches may comprise more that half of the total number, and will probably not be significant, unless of course you are looking specifically for patterns and may not want to discard sing instances.

• you can limit the size of the lists by searching only for words starting with a particular letter. If you don't want to use an exclusion list this is the best way to limit the size of the lists, and you can create lists for all the letters of the alphabet separately.

Figure 22: an Exclusion List

Using the Concgram Configurations List  Next page ->