Is writing style determined by a computer algorithm?

[Danger]

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

My thoughts exactly. The site (alleged site?) asked for a sample, but didn't specify what sort of sample. I've written comedy, serious ****, in between... one novel, one movie screenplay, half a dozen TV scripts, a graphic novel inroductory issue, who knows what else... and this thing boils me down to Tolstoy based upon the intro to a novel that is already 30 years out of date?

 

[Jack21222]

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

From an article about the site. The creator of the site seems to agree with this conclusion, if the article is even remotely accurate.

Chestnykh modeled the site on software for e-mail spam filters. This means that the site's text analysis is largely keyword based. Even if you write in short, declarative, Hemingwayesque sentences, its your word choice that may determine your comparison.

Most writers will tell you, though, that the most telling signs of influence come from punctuation, rhythm and structure. I Write Like does account for some elements of style by things such as number of words per sentence.

Chestnykh has uploaded works by about 50 authors – three books for each, he said. That, too, explains some of its shortcomings. Melville, for example, isn't in the system.

But Chestnykh never expected the sudden success of the site and he plans to improve its accuracy by including more books and adding a probability percentage for each result. He hopes it can eventually be profitable.

"I think that people really like to know how they write, even if it's not accurate results," said Chestnykh. "Still it's fun for them."

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/17/i-write-like-website-goes_n_650037.html

Emphasis mine.

 

[Pythagorean]

I see. I was impressed that it could identify the authors in its database, at least.

He hopes it can eventually be profitable.

:P

 

[Danger]

[spookyquote]This means that the site's text analysis is largely keyword based. Even if you write in short, declarative, Hemingwayesque sentences, its your word choice that may determine your comparison.[/spookyquote]
Hmmm... that should be it's your word choice that might determine... etc.. How the hell is this guy going to analyze the English language when he's illiterate in it himself?

 

[Office_Shredder]

[spookyquote]This means that the site's text analysis is largely keyword based. Even if you write in short, declarative, Hemingwayesque sentences, its your word choice that may determine your comparison.[/spookyquote]
Hmmm... that should be it's your word choice that might determine... etc.. How the hell is this guy going to analyze the English language when he's illiterate in it himself?

Because analyzing word choice doesn't require any knowledge of the language

 

[Danger]

Because analyzing word choice doesn't require any knowledge of the language

I can see that you have succeeded Artman as my nemesis. You are putting me into Commander Data mode: "Your analysis is correct, Captain, and quite intriguing. I request a few minutes and Geordi's assistance to temporarily negate the 3 Laws so I might be able to introduce my boot to your ***."

 

[rootX]

I believe it is not very hard to develop an algorithm that uses criteria and authors large amount of texts as inputs to determine different groups. You can continue refining the criteria until each group has only 1-2 authors. Once that is done you just need to take user inputs, determine their groups based on the criteria, and provide them author that shares the same group.

 

[Danger]

I believe it is not very hard to develop an algorithm that uses criteria and authors large amount of texts as inputs to determine different groups. You can continue refining the criteria until each group has only 1-2 authors. Once that is done you just need to take user inputs, determine their groups based on the criteria, and provide them author that shares the same group.

So the next time I take the test, should I totally ignore my novel and my teleplays and instead submit my meagre contributions to Penthouse Letters? They're cheezy, but pay well...

 

[HeLiXe]

First I pasted an assignment on religion from my humanities class and it said I write like Dan Brown.

Then I pasted an assignment on cognitive and behavioral psychology from my psych class and it said I write like William Shakespeare

 

[Danger]

Then I pasted an assignment on cognitive and behavioral psychology from my psych class and it said I write like William Shakespeare

Was that, by any chance, based upon spelling? Old Willie signed his own name at least half a dozen different ways. That's one of the reasons why it was so difficult to determine which of the plays attributed to him were actually written by him.

 

[HeLiXe]

Well in which regard? The humanities assignment had words which could be considered as misspellings, as they were from another language, while the psych assignment had no foreign languages, abbreviations or anything else which could be considered a misspelling.

 

[Pyrrhus]

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

My point was in agreement that the algorithm could be heavily procedural in nature (e.g. Check word count -> compare word to a list, and so on). I doubt it is a fair assessment of writing style, as most here have discussed.