Distant reading "Dire Cartographies" by Margaret Atwood and "Spatial Humanities" by David Joseph Wrisley provides insights as to how vocabulary is not mutually exclusive to one field. Atwood uses historical representations of maps as examples of representations of worlds and a foundation upon which she builds her projection of the future on, and she does so using several of the same words and concepts as Wrisley does. One might think that these texts are in the same field because of this when they are not. However, there are several shared concepts in each text that use different language to discuss the same things, which suggests a shortcoming of distant reading alone. Distant reading analyzes data using specific word choices, so if I were to simply distant read these texts, I would miss that they both discuss history and begin their essays in a similar flow because they use different language to do this.

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One might also make assumptions about what the articles are about based on which words are used the most. In both cases, a simple distant reading of the texts does not provide the valuable knowledge that accompanies close reading a text. One can make assumptions based on the word choices, but those assumptions may be entirely incorrect because they are not grounded in the context that close reading provides. Distant reading using Voyant Tools is not representative of these essays, as a distant reading lacks the narrative and artistry that Atwood writes with, as well as the value that the images and words written on said images add to Wrisley's piece.

 

For example, through a distant reading, one would miss that both Atwood and Wrisley discuss how maps are representative of both time and space, even though they both frequently use the words "maps" and "time," according to a Voyant Tools analysis of frequently used words. Similarly, through a close reading, one would miss that Atwood and Wrisley's texts both have "maps" as their third most frequently used word in the text. Perhaps one would miss that "maps" is used in Atwood's piece much more frequently in the beginning of the text as an introduction to the test of it without seeing the "Word Trends" graph for "Dire Cartographies," which is an added insight into the flow of her piece. However, had Atwood chosen a different word to use instead of "maps" to write about maps for the rest of the piece, the "Word Trends" graph would not provide insights into the flow of the piece. Similarly, one might not realize that Wrisley's usage of the word "maps" peaks in the middle of his piece rather than the beginning or the end, which suggests that he discusses "maps" in his piece by name mostly in the middle of the piece. This also suggests that the flow of the narrative of this piece is different from that of Atwood's, as she uses maps to add to the historical introduction, whereas Wrisley's piece is mainly about maps and digital mapping.

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In this way, there are still benefits to distant reading when using a software like Voyant Tools, as it can be useful in pointing out similarities between texts that may are typically not evident to the human eye, such as word frequency. However, when combining the two, distant reading and close reading, one can engage with ideas and topics specific to each piece, as well as mutual ideas and topics that are in texts, even texts that are in different genres like "Dire Cartographies" and "Spatial Humanities," and analyze their significance and relation to each other and literature as a whole. Consequently, the combination of distant reading and close reading and the comparison of the two provides a comprehensive analysis of both texts individually through close reading and both texts relationally through analyzing the data that a software like Voyant Tools provides for a distant reading. Valuable information would have been left out of the discussion of these texts if they were not both read in a close reading, in a distant reading, and then compared with each other.