The web tool at “I Write Like . . . ” claims to use a statistical analysis tool that analyzes a person’s word choice and writing style and compares them to those of famous writers.
Based on my latest On the Square article, it concluded:
I was a bit skeptical of the results but after running random samples of other First Things editors, I realized that it was completely accurate:
Joseph Bottum
R.R Reno
David Goldman
David Mills
July 14th, 2010 | 4:04 pm
Reno and Dan Brown, yeah, definitely.
I tried two samples and got Isaac Asimov and James Joyce. As the second was for a column on apologetics I write for our diocesan newspaper, one that’s aimed at the average reader, I’m not so pleased with it.
July 14th, 2010 | 4:05 pm
Did you use different samples? For me, I pasted two articles I’ve published–one on Pius XII and one on baseball–and a post from my fishing blog, and I got Dan Brown (Pius XII), Kurt Vonnegut (baseball), and Stephen King (fishing blog).
July 14th, 2010 | 4:07 pm
Strange, I put in transcripts of Mel Gibson’s drunken rants, and I got O.J. Simpson.
(Ok, I didn’t.)
July 14th, 2010 | 4:38 pm
Mine are all over the place depending mostly on subject, which is strange because I’ve been told by my teachers that I have a very distinct writing style (to the point that I have been picked out of an anonymous lineup of 50+ essays before.)
Not sure how much I trust this thing….
July 14th, 2010 | 4:49 pm
[...] writing style is most similar to. Jim West gets to be like Jonathan Swift. Stuart gets Bram Stoker. Joe Carter gets Stephen King. And I get Dan Brown? I almost gave up writing [...]
July 14th, 2010 | 4:52 pm
It’s fun, but it’s deeply flawed. For various pieces, I got a James Joyce, a Stephen King, a Kurt Vonnegut, and HP Lovecraft and a Douglas Adams–sometimes two different authors for the same piece. But it’s fun.
Another fun game is the Gender Genie.
July 14th, 2010 | 5:09 pm
I entered an linguistics article that I wrote and got Isaac Asimov, which is fair. Not thrilled with the David Goldman connection, though, since I usually don’t enjoy his posts.
July 14th, 2010 | 5:40 pm
Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill myself: Dan Brown and I evidently write like this:
Our first morning in England, I attempted to make toast. The toaster was set under ’1′ on a 0 to 8 scale, yet produced blackened shingles. Is this an English thing? ’8′ would probably reduce a slice of bread to superheated plasma, which, upon meeting and being contained by the ancient brick kitchen walls, floor and ceiling, would undergo fusion, consuming the building, England and, ultimately, in a fearful chain reaction, earth itself.
Light years away, alien beings would eventually see the bright flash in the sky. ‘Oh, look!’ they would say, waving a tentacle in our general direction, ‘Toast!’
July 14th, 2010 | 5:42 pm
Never mind – tried another sample, and it seems Kurt Vonnegut and I write a lot alike. That, I can live with.
July 14th, 2010 | 5:47 pm
Surprised no one has done this – plugged in the first few lines of Genesis from the King James Bible – it appears God writes like Edgar Allen Poe.
July 14th, 2010 | 8:04 pm
Three different samples from me, and three different results: David Foster Wallace, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dan Brown. Is it possible that my style varies so much from piece to piece so that each paper resembles Not very likely, I think!
July 14th, 2010 | 8:45 pm
Well, two more samples got me Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen, so it looks like I’m a real all’rounder!
But then I put in an extremely long sample consisting of a huge array of different samples, and got David Foster Wallace again, so I’m calling that my final result.
July 14th, 2010 | 10:16 pm
I pasted a section of the New York telephone book into it and got Theodore Dresier. (Just kidding.)
July 14th, 2010 | 10:25 pm
Mine said David Foster Wallace too.
July 14th, 2010 | 11:58 pm
I plugged in this essay written by Isaac Asimov. See http://www.purewatergazette.net/asimov.htm
He writes like H.P. Lovecraft.
July 15th, 2010 | 1:52 am
I plugged in the first two paragraphs of “The Masque of the Red Death”. Apparently Poe wrote like Jonathan Swift.
July 15th, 2010 | 3:36 am
Mine were all over the place; I got Charles Dickens twice, H. P. Lovecraft four times, Edgar Allen Poe four times, David Foster Wallace four times, George Orwell once, Dan Brown six times (sigh), P. G. Wodehouse once, James Joyce four times, Isaac Asimov once, Vladimir Nabokov once, Oscar Wilde once, Mary Shelley once, J. R. R. Tolkien once, and Margaret Atwood once. I don’t think this is going to be a great tool for detecting forgeries by analyzing writing styles; two different poems by G. K. Chesterton came up William Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling. It’s obviously not a scientific thing; more on the lines of those quizzes where they tell you whether you’re more like Superman or Wonder Woman, I would guess.
July 15th, 2010 | 6:04 am
Stephen King, James Joyce, Margaret Mitchell and . . .
Shakespeare!
Those are my results on four posts from my own blog. I like the last one best, heheheee!
July 15th, 2010 | 9:34 am
How come no one gets the response,
“You write like an unpublishable writer.”?
July 15th, 2010 | 11:51 am
Well, it proves that one shouldn’t succumb to despair until after a second opinion. “Dan Brown” was my first result. Leaving me staring at my computer and wondering if I would be able to complete my the less than challenging tasks of my day job. I found another sample and that came back “David Foster Wallace.” The next was “Isaac Asimov.” I’ll just sit here until it comes back “Walker Percy.”
July 15th, 2010 | 1:15 pm
Wow, apparently I write like Stephanie Meyer AND James Joyce (based on two different samples).
Suspicious?
I took a slice from The Silver Chair and found out that C.S. Lewis apparently writes like Vladimir Nabokov.
What?
July 15th, 2010 | 1:29 pm
I got James Joyce – but I really wanted Lovecraft! LOL
July 15th, 2010 | 1:56 pm
I got Jonathan Swift.
I’ll take this moment to say “IN your FACE First Things!”
Or is that not Swiftian enough?
July 15th, 2010 | 1:57 pm
It seems that I mostly write like David Foster Wallace. But then, so did Abraham Lincoln (2nd Inaugural Address) and, apparently, William Shakespeare (Sonnet #30).
Robert Frost (Blueberries) wrote like Margaret Atwood.
I wrote a prize-winning engineering paper in 1988 in the style of Ian Flemming. Most of my subsequent technical writing seems to be in the style of David Foster Wallace. No prizes, though.
July 15th, 2010 | 3:01 pm
I put in four different samples of different genres from my adult life, and got James Joyce for all of them. I then dug up something I wrote when I was thirteen and got Harry Harrison. If this progression continues, I’ll be Shakespeare by the time I’m sixty.
I then decided to play a few games–
A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man was recognized as Joyce.
Charles Dickens’ Bleak House got James Joyce.
An NYT article on psychology got David Foster Wallace
D.H. Lawrence got Edgar Allan Poe.
H.P. Lovecraft got himself, and so did almost all the staff of TLS
An article on Mussolini’s mistress got Mario Puzo
An Article on Arthur Conan Doyle got Doyle himself.
Vladimir Nabokov got himself.
July 15th, 2010 | 3:36 pm
Huh. Bram Stoker. And here I thought I wrote too much like a poor copy of Orson Scott Card.
July 15th, 2010 | 4:29 pm
I used one sample, got George Orwell, and quit while I was ahead. This must be an infallible system.
July 16th, 2010 | 12:53 pm
This is a very sophmoric site. For an analysis of the site and really good discussion I encourage you to go to http://zia-narratora.livejournal.com/627422.html
Her blog is spot on for this item and the discussions are awesome.
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