I have in the past used Wordle to create a word cloud for a school project so I had no trouble with that site but I did have issues using Voyant and could not get it to delete additional stop words beyond what were in the dictionary for the English option.

I think the Wordle word cloud makes it easier to understand the story because more of the stop words were not on it. You can clearly tell from both clouds that Holmes is the key component in the story. Additionally, “photograph” is one of the largest words in both clouds, it actually appears to be the second largest in the Wordle word cloud. This tells you that the main focus of the story is about a photograph which is important because that is exactly what Holmes is trying to retrieve throughout the tale. The words King, Majesty, and woman/Irene are also clearly visible. Irene is very important in the story not only because she is originally who Holmes is searching for but also because she changes Holmes’ view on woman in general.  King and Majesty appearing larger tells one that the story is about a case that entails some sort of royalty. Some words that are larger that do not play main roles in the plot are door, one, must, said, minutes, house, face, and hand. These words though not stop words per-say do not pertain to the plot in a way that one can understand through the word cloud.  This is a huge con of using a word cloud- that unimportant words are shown and can throw off the plot of the story. Words like that can make it more difficult to understand what the tale is about. A huge pro though is the complete opposite and that is being able to get the general idea of a story in just a glance. One can view a word cloud and get an overview of important parts or more of words within a story. Overall, I think word clouds are visually appealing but not that helpful in this instance.