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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 26, 1971)
WACO—Traditionally regarded as a complicated tool for solving mathematical or scientific prob lems, the computer is a versatile machine that recently was used by a Baylor University English instructor to compile a concord ance of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Mrs. Gladys W. Hudson utilized the university’s Honeywell 1250 College Station, Texas Wednesday, May 26, 1971 THE BATTALION Computer helps assemble ‘Paradise Lost’ concordance computer and computer programs created by her husband, Jack W. Hudson, to compile “ ‘Paradise Lost’: A Concordance.” The Gale Research Co. of Detroit has pub lished the concordance of the Eng lish poet’s masterpiece. The concordance is an alpha betical listing of all the words in the 12 books of “Paradise Lost.” After each word cited is a list of the books and line numbers in which the word is found. In the case of some words, such as “heaven,” this list is several hun dred entries long. The concordance also includes a word count of how often a word is used in “Paradise Lost.” Its primary use will be by researchers studying Milton. The Hudsons spent the greater part of the fall semester working on the book in their spare time. Mrs. Hudson first became inter ested in the project while taking a Milton course taught by Dr. Jack Herring, professor of Eng lish and director of the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor. What started out as a class proj ect developed into a book when Mrs. Hudson decided to create the concordance. Herring said the concordance “will make it possible for schol ars studying ‘Paradise Lost’ to find references under these words and also to study variations in Milton’s spelling. It will be help ful in studying not only his ideas but his use of the English lan guage.” Hudson, director of manage ment information systems in the data processing department at Baylor, said the entire text of “Paradise Lost” had to be trans cribed onto computer cards. “We used the computer to come up with a format for scanning and separating the words,” he said. “There are more than 88,000 words in the entire text of “Par adise Lost” and separating them was quite a task. I had to create programs to regard such words as ‘a’ and ‘the’ as insignificant and had to formulate a way to make ‘invisible hyphens’ so that certain words, which are not usu ally hyphenated, would be sep arated out as one word and still be printed out as an unhyphenat ed word,” he explained. Other difficulties were encoun tered. Hudson said he had a prob lem in “trying to get the com puter to read the word ‘may’ dif ferently from the month ‘May.’ ” The Hudsons said they are pleased the total project shows that computers are not limited just to bookkeeping and solving scientific problems. “We used the computer as an aid in compiling a piece of litera ture,” Hudson said. “The com puter can be used to fulfill various needs if the individual can communicate what * done.” needs tj “An Elizabeth Barrett Bro^ Concordance,” which win ^ the complete poetry 0 f Browning. It will be similaft., way in which “Paradise Loaf; indexed. The new work is dj, publication in about nine m 0l] j Mrs. Hudson also recently, appointed editor of a new a I cordance being produced by J, el University in Philadelphia concordance will cover the ( plete prose works of Milton) Hudson will edit one volume 0 f 14-volume work. 9 MUSTARD CUUNKTUNR KETCHUP BBQ SBUCt HOT OCXS gflUCE C54 37i '241 ,w k. 39i £ o y ^ 39^ 3Bf OfCOJKiT HnID 3BHinVR'P5 mM&uquid If If gSroiHDOIIPS lOOZ. TWIN) 0c*lrJi£ ectWic 39? FRESH H2EAP 3 89c HOMO MILK ft) U2 cPhophkHkwe ^ 6 4a sucp RQCiLyW'qqtY FPPTKE HtteTMgffToMTHe (XEM& *2 CUT* UP FRYERS WE GIVE ^jPFpE'FV Lg 854 SPUT BBOtLERS im VHIM0BW0B •i awwsT | r\ i Miw&we 15. . 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