Contents - Index - Previous - Next

Getting Started

Context-sensitive help is available at many points in the program by pressing the F1 key.

What is a concordance?
What the program does
The program's main window
Tutorial files
______________________________________________________________________________ 

Quick Start

Here's a minimalist's guide to using Concordance:
  • Select 'Make Full Concordance'  from the File Menu, then select a plain (ASCII) text file containing the text you want to use.  I urge you to begin with the tutorial files which are in the Sample Files folder.  The first one is called Demo1.txt.
  • Alternatively, choose  'Make Fast Concordance' from the File Menu, specify the words you want to include in your concordance, then select the file containing your text.
  • The concordance will be made and displayed.  The left-hand pane is the Wordlist View, containing all the words found in the text, with their frequencies of occurrence.  Click on any word to display all its contexts in the right-hand pane, the Context View.
  • In the Context View, click on a line and a viewer will open showing the full text from which the concordance was made, positioned to the line you clicked on.
  • In the full text viewer, double-click on any word, and the Wordlist View will position itself to display that word.  

    After that, see Preparing Text and Changing What's Displayed to get fuller control over your results.

    Don't overlook the tutorial files  in the Sample Files folder.  You are strongly recommended to make concordances to them as a quick way of learning the essential features of the program.

    More advanced tutorial material, written by professional users of Concordance, is available on the web. Links are on the page on the Concordance website entitled Getting started with text analysis - tutorials and practical exercises. 


    ______________________________________________________________________________