Is writing style determined by a computer algorithm?

[ZQrn]

You make a good case for simplifying our language, much as the metric system simplifies our units of measure.

Did I?

I use the objective whom all the time, and do so correctly, if I may be so bold to state, I maintain spellings as connexion, inflexion, formulae, octopodes...

I'm just pointing out that a lot of linguistic prescription is ultimately based on nothing. The most awkward of these might be that 'its' is actually a contamination comparable to writing 'dont', the word 'its' is a fairly recent misspelling of 'it's'. Just as we say 'John's car' and 'John's stand there' we say 'it's car' and 'it's going to the store', or at least, 'we' did so till quite recently.

Variously one encounters arguments such as that it's supposed to be 'its' when it's possessive because it's a pronoun. A: it's not a pronoun, it's a noun phrase with an enclitic morpheme. B: even if it were, that's a particularly nonsensical reason, the apostrophe marks a vowel deletion, and just as 'John's' originated from a shorter form of 'Johnes', so did 'its' from 'ites', and up to 1920 there were still reputable authors who condemned the practice.

What I'm trying to say with this ranting is, never believe an English teacher, they hardly know anything about English, they reproduce rules as taught to them without questioning and without checking, there are few courses in education filled with such blatant lies as language courses. They aren't about teaching you theoretical or practical knowledge, they are about controlling your life and making up lies to justify arbitrary rules.

 

[drizzle]

I got David Foster Wallace for a few lines of my thesis... And Mark Twain for a few rhetoric lines of mine... I think I can get them all, just give me a few moments!

 

[Office_Shredder]

I'm just pointing out that a lot of linguistic prescription is ultimately based on nothing. The most awkward of these might be that 'its' is actually a contamination comparable to writing 'dont', the word 'its' is a fairly recent misspelling of 'it's'. Just as we say 'John's car' and 'John's stand there' we say 'it's car' and 'it's going to the store', or at least, 'we' did so till quite recently.

How is not using an apostrophe to denote possession the same as not using an apostrophe to denote a contraction?

Also, you care way too much about conforming to English as used in the early 20th century it seems. English class is designed to control your life? What?

 

[Alienjoey]

I got Cory Doctorow, whom I've never heard of before.

But the first paragraph from Sarah Palin's book gets James Joyce...Scary!

 

[ZQrn]

How is not using an apostrophe to denote possession the same as not using an apostrophe to denote a contraction?

Because in 'its' it is a contraction, it's a contraction, or more properly a vowel deletion of ites.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=its&searchmode=none

Just like 'John's' is a vowel deletion of 'Johnes', they are the same suffix with the same historical basis.

Also, you care way too much about conforming to English as used in the early 20th century it seems. English class is designed to control your life? What?

I prefer to spell things sensibly and consistently and not follow arbitrary rules for sake of peer pressure. Therefore I write realize, connexion, inflexion, but also fetus and cetera as foetus and caetera are folk etymologies.

 

[dlgoff]

This is a fun little tool.

You been putting other members post in there?

 

[lisab]

You been putting other members post in there?

...why, erm, no ...

 

[physlover1]

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut
^_^
actually i don't know him

 

[fluidistic]

I also got Kurt Vonnegut.
Now is someone willing to copy say 2 sentences of a random Stephen King's book and see if Stephen King writes like Stephen King?

 

[turbo]

Vonnegut wrote in short simple sentences using words that any teenager could grasp. I think he vacationed in my neck of the woods. There is a remote pond with some impressive brookies a bit north of here named Kilgore Pond - the likely source of the name for his fictional author "Kilgore Trout". It is said that he got the name as a pseudonym for his friend Theodore Sturgeon, but I like my guess better.

 

[physics girl phd]

I too have been analyzed to write like David Foster Wallace, which thrills me, since I submitted two segments from writings that I am considering for actual publication (one short story and one longer memoir work), and one of the individuals who I'd like to think my writing is modeled after is DFW.

I think in large part it is because of long, multi-clausal sentences, though I'll confess the five paragraphs I grabbed from the longer work did contain extensive footnotes (this is the work that is more directly modeled after DFW's style).

Edited to add: I just submitted one of my longer posts from the education section, and it too yields David Foster Wallace. Were it not from the notes that others get different results for different submissions, I'd be afraid that the program has tagged my computer and would be returning the same response for all my submissions from this one.

Also: A book review on "Cosmic Society: Towards a Sociology of the Universe" that I co-wrote with my spouse gets analyzed as Arthur C. Clark. We wrote a fairly scathing review, to which my main contribution was statistical analysis that contributed to our scathingness (but not directly in our review) and the phrase " theoretical gobbledygook" which is in the review.

 

[Tobias Funke]

I call the big one Bitey. Dental Plan! Lisa needs Braces. Hello Joe! Iron helps us play. I call the big one Bitey. Dental Plan! Lisa needs Braces. Hello Joe! Iron helps us play. I call the big one Bitey. Dental Plan! Lisa needs Braces. Hello Joe! Iron helps us play. I call the big one Bitey. Dental Plan! Lisa needs Braces. Hello Joe! Iron helps us play. I call the big one Bitey. Dental Plan! Lisa needs Braces. Hello Joe! Iron helps us play.

This churned out James Joyce.

 

[BobG]

Did James Joyce suffer from periodontal disease?

 

[rootX]

Wow! The analyzer correctly identifies who wrote that paragraph (but it doesn't identify which book it came from).

This is a fun little tool.

I noticed it correctly identified Mark Twain from two of his fiction writings however failed when I used his non-fiction writing.. and in one other fiction bookThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer --> Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court --> Charles Dickens

http://www.literaturepage.com/authors/Mark-Twain.html

 

[Anonymous217]

This seems very inaccurate to me. I pasted a Sense and Sensibility essay I wrote a year ago and it said I wrote like Jane Austen (I took out all the quotes). Really now?

 

[Math Is Hard]

I tried some e.e. cummings (my sweet old etcetera) and got James Joyce as a result.

Sylvia Plath (Lament)was recognized as Arthur Conan Doyle.

T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) yields Charles Dickens.

 

[GeorginaS]

I tried some e.e. cummings (my sweet old etcetera) and got James Joyce as a result.

Sylvia Plath (Lament)was recognized as Arthur Conan Doyle.

T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) yields Charles Dickens.

That's just party pooping.

But yeah, no kidding. At the very least you'd expect the code to have access to a database of popular writing.

 

[Pythagorean]

I tried some e.e. cummings (my sweet old etcetera) and got James Joyce as a result.

Sylvia Plath (Lament)was recognized as Arthur Conan Doyle.

T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) yields Charles Dickens.

Yeah, but to be fair, if you put in text from Charles Dickens, you get Charles Dickens, and you get Arthur Conan Doyle for works by Doyle.

1 of the 5 trials for Dickens, I got Stephen King. All the inputs came from A Christmas Carol, so I don't think they cheated and just put a text identifier in, I think it actually does some kind of analysis.

 

[Pythagorean]

I did a nonsensical rant with a lot of curse words and I got Cory Doctorow (whoever that is)

 

[Pyrrhus]

I pasted my writing from a journal paper... It says I write like Edgar Allan Poe, WOW

If you just spam "elf" a bunch of times you get J.K. Rowling

The word murder? Edgar allen poe.

I suspect when they say it analyzes your word choice and writing style, they really just mean word choice. Probably a simple document comparison algorithm based on word counts to see which author's writing you compare most similarly too

Interesting exercise: pick a word, and guess which author you will be compared to when you put it in (you'll need to repeat the word a bunch of times to get past the minimum word limit... use copy paste for this).

Perhaps for some words, but in my journal article the word murder is nowhere to be found.

 

[xunxine]

I did a nonsensical rant with a lot of curse words and I got Cory Doctorow (whoever that is)

He's a blogger!

blog entry + nonsense = Cory Doctorow?
Is he any good?

I guess it's database of authors is limited, ...

I'm inclined to agree with this.

I got Cory Doctorow, whom I've never heard of before.

But the first paragraph from Sarah Palin's book gets James Joyce...Scary!

Maybe Sarah Palin writes like James Joyce? Who writes strictly original stuff nowadays? The way we write is very much influenced by and mixture of the things we read.

 

[Pythagorean]

when I put garbage in: kajfd ;lkaelkm afcsl;ekj l;a,smef lkjesar

I get James Joyce

 

[GeorginaS]

when I put garbage in: kajfd ;lkaelkm afcsl;ekj l;a,smef lkjesar

I get James Joyce

That, actually, entirely makes sense.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

when I put garbage in: kajfd ;lkaelkm afcsl;ekj l;a,smef lkjesar

I get James Joyce

Well obviously you found yourself a thunderword.

 

[Pythagorean]

huh, interesting:

http://atlantapoetsgroup.blogspot.com/2007/10/query-on-joyces-thunderwords.html

 

[Jack21222]

I entered 3 essays from my ethics class I just finished, and came up with 3 different authors.

H.P. Lovecraft
William Gibson
Dan Brown

Until this thing can come up with a fairly consistent output, I'm not sure I trust it.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I entered 3 essays from my ethics class I just finished, and came up with 3 different authors.

H.P. Lovecraft
William Gibson
Dan Brown

Until this thing can come up with a fairly consistent output, I'm not sure I trust it.

Ever consider that maybe you are the one that isn't coming up with some consistent output? ;-p

 

[Office_Shredder]

Perhaps for some words, but in my journal article the word murder is nowhere to be found.

I'm not really sure what your point is here...

 

[Jack21222]

Ever consider that maybe you are the one that isn't coming up with some consistent output? ;-p

My writing style is fairly consistent by my own estimation. This website only goes by word selection, and not things like sentence structure. It is funny, though, that my essay about anthropogenic climate change matched up with Lovecraft, and my one about the value of science to society came up as Gibson (the steampunk writer).

 

[hypatia]

Eh gads...Bram Stoker

 

[Danger]

I went into the test upon first provocation, and so have missed several pages of responses. My input was the original opening of my novel. (I have since instituted a new opening that consists of a few paragraphs ahead of what I submitted.)
Leo Tolstoy?
I love and respect old Uncle Leo, but when the hell did he ever write about a hypersonic fighter aircraft ripping up the Thule Greenland NORAD tracking station?
Methinks that this site extrapolates a tad overly.

 

[Noxide]

I bet you if you type random garbage it will tell you you write like some great author. I'll paste the following and see what it says:

"When Adam sidewalk into fairground red the elephants tube slid before the night."

Your Badge
I write like
Margaret Atwood.

I wouldn't be surprised if it just picks a random author. If it helps your ego fine but don't take it seriously.

To be fair, Margaret Atwood is a rather garbacious writer.

 

[Pythagorean]

This website only goes by word selection, and not things like sentence structure.

The site says:

Check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.

I'm not sure what they mean by 'writing style', but how have you ruled out sentence structure?

 

[Office_Shredder]

I'm not sure what they mean by 'writing style', but how have you ruled out sentence structure?

Sentence structure is really hard to define/analyze with a computer. Word count is really easy.

 

[BobG]

Words per sentence? Length of words?

How does Microsoft Word analyze the reading level of any paper you write? It at least looks at the number of passive sentences.