VARD 2 is a free, creative commons tool for preprocessing historical corpora. Built in Java, it enables researchers to easily match up historic variant spellings with modern conventions. Though optimized for Early Modern English, other languages can be accomodated with user-supplied variant word lists.

VARD 2 is an interactive piece of software produced in Java designed to assist users of historical corpora in dealing with spelling variation, particularly in Early Modern English texts. The tool is intended to be a pre-processor to other corpus linguistic methods such as keyword analysis, collocations and annotation (e.g. POS and semantic tagging), the aim being to improve the accuracy of these tools

The VARD 2 software uses techniques derived from modern spell checkers to find candidate modern form replacements for spelling variants found within historical texts. The user can choose to process texts manually, selecting a candidate replacement offered by the system; automatically, allowing the system to use the best candidate replacement found; or semi-automatically, training the tool on a sample of the corpora.

The tool is designed specifically for Early Modern English spelling variation, but it can be used to deal with possibly any form of spelling variation, in any language, by plugging in your own dictionary and spelling rules.

Various related publications are available detailing the tool and its uses. And a full userguide is available.