Comparing Text

I've read posts by others about comparing text from two different sources to identify the differences. I certainly saw the benefit of doing this, but never had a big reason to do it myself - until now. 

The other day, I was working with an ancestor who had several different obituaries published (in different newspapers and online). Obits can be substantially the same or they can be vastly different. Since they take a long time to mine details from, I wanted a way to see the differences. It they were identical (without having to read a few words at at time to compare), I'd know I didn't need to "re-mine" a particular version of the obit. And if the copy I worked from contained all the pertinent details also shown in another version, linking it would be much faster as I wouldn't need to create additional new facts (though I'd still need to link all the matching ones). 

I set off to find some free online tools for making the comparison:

• Diffchecker.com  - Compare text, images, Word, PDF, Excel to a like file. Differences are highlighted for easy recognition. While additions and deletions are highlighted, it takes looking at both to spot all the differences.
  
  
  
• GoTranscript - Easy to use, offers option to ignore capitalization and punctuation. Additions and deletions are clearly identified by color in one spot, making it easier to see the differences.
  
  
  
• SEO Magnifier - Allows comparison of text via copy/paste, URL or documents. Accurate, and easy to spot deletions, but additions are slightly less pronounces.
  

All three free options get the job done without much fuss. For the task at hand, straight up text comparison, I actually preferred GoTranscript for the visual simplicity. The results were the most natural for the way my brain processes. It happens to be the site with the least bells and whistles, but it's my top pick.

Diffchecker offers other comparison options beyond just text. It includes comparison of images, documents (Word and PDF) and Excel. This could be helpful for a number of different tasks. It also has a desktop version available (but I did not install or test it). SEO Magnifier offers a considerable number of additional online SEO tools content creators may find helpful. The average genealogist may not be interested in SEO, but those who create for others may very well find SEO Magnifier offers additional benefits.

Of course, I've included links to these sites in my Online Tools section of my Genealogy Toolbox. So,  next time you encounter the need to compare two sets of text for differences, hop on over and give one of these sites (or all of these sites!) a try!. 

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay