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John Ladd

@jrladd.com

120 followers 126 following 19 posts

Assistant Prof @ Washington & Jefferson CIS Data science, cultural analytics, network analysis, early modern lit, birds jrladd.com

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John Ladd @jrladd.com · 08/07/2026

Phrase Search guides you through the different CQL queries you might run on a single phrase. It has three outputs that search for the exact phrase, just the content words (in any order), and a string of part-of-speech tags (as close as we can get to syntax, for now). earlyprint.org/lab/tool_phr...

A screenshot of part of EarlyPrint's Phrase Search interface, showing results for the phrase "for whom the bell tolls." The image shows the content results, which search for keywords in the phrase in any order, and the form results, which look for similar part-of-speech sequences. Each set of results has buttons to run the same searches in Corpus Search and the Ngram Browser.

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John Ladd @jrladd.com · 08/07/2026

The Bibliographia, which shows the entire EarlyPrint corpus as an interactive map, has a new sharper design and similarities based on the latest updates to the EP corpus. You can highlight specific subject headings, filter by date, and search for specific texts. earlyprint.org/bibliographi...

A screenshot of the EarlyPrint Bibliographia, an interactive scatter plot of more than 50,000 texts, with texts labeled as "Sermons, English", "Ballads", and "Controversial Literature" highlighted in blue, yellow, and purple respectively. On the left is a panel that allows the user to adjust the date range and selected subject headings. The 1667 edition of Paradise Lost is selected on the plot, and its metadata is shown in the box on the right.

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John Ladd @jrladd.com · 08/07/2026

Because the backend of the new Ngram Browser is our Corpus Search, you can use the full flexibility of Corpus Query Language in searches. So you can search within specific book parts, like only in front matter. Here's a search for "forsooth" only in lines of verse: earlyprint.org/ngram/?q=%5B...

A screenshot showing a CQL Ngram Browser query for the word "forsooth" only within lines of verse in the corpus. It shows a blue line that goes gradually down over time, from 1550 to 1700.

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John Ladd @jrladd.com · 08/07/2026

The Ngram Browser retains all the capabilities you're used to, but now you're no longer limited to 1- to 3-word sequences. Search for as long a phrase as you want! And compare phrases of different lengths to each other in the same search: earlyprint.org/ngram/?q=to+...

A screenshot of the EarlyPrint Ngram Browser, showing a search comparing the 2-word phrase "to be" to the 3-word phrase "not to be". "To be" is much more frequent and is represented by an orange line; "not to be" is represented by a much lower blue line.

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John Ladd @jrladd.com · 08/07/2026

I made some exciting updates to the EarlyPrint Lab's tools over the past few weeks. You can search and explore printed books from 1500–1700 in new and more flexible ways! The Ngram Browser, Bibliographia, and Phrase Search tools have all been updated on earlyprint.org. Thread 👇

A screenshot of the EarlyPrint Ngram browser, a line plot with two lines represent the words "love" and "loue" showing that v replaces u around 1630. Also includes a bar plot showing the overall frequence of "love" is much higher than "loue".

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John Ladd @jrladd.com · 26/03/2026

Very happy and excited to be returning to Dream Lab again this May to explore early modern book history with text analysis, social networks, and machine learning. Consider joining me in Philly!

A line chart from the N-Gram Browser on earlyprint.org. It shows the frequency of the words "happy" and "excited" from 1550 to 1700. Both words are increasing in frequency, but happy is increasing the most dramatically.

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