Tuesday, July 20, 2010

So, do you write like a famous author?

I couldn't resist. In fact, as soon as I heard about the Web site, I knew I'd have to try it out.

The site is called I Write Like, and it will analyze your writing style to determine (supposedly) which famous author your writing style most resembles. It's only been up a few days, and it already has analyzed 1.5 million pieces of text, so apparently I'm not the only curious one. It's easy. You visit the site, paste in a paragraph or two of your writing, press a button, and ta da! The comparison is made.

But don't take it too seriously. It was developed by Russian software developer Dmitry Chestnykh, who already told news outlets he's not particularly qualified to analyze literature - the site is really just a learning experiment for him.

Maybe that's why when CNN pasted in Kim Kardashian's blog entries, they were said to resemble the writings of James Joyce. Or maybe they do. I don't know; I'm not familiar with the blog, so who am I to judge?

But who cares, right? It still sounded fun. So I went to the site, www.iwl.me and cut and pasted a paragraph of text from this blog. I hit the "Analyze" button. Guess who?

Stephenie Meyer. Yep. Of Twilight fame. Now I really need to get around to finishing that book.

Because I'm greedy, I decided to try again. I cut and pasted a paragraph from a news story I'd written years ago about a center that helped children deal with grief. I always liked how that story turned out. I pressed "Analyze."

Chuck Palahniuk - the author of Fight Club.

Wow. Those are pretty different. Really, really different.

All right then. Well, I'm nothing if not flexible.

1 comment:

  1. It said I write like Joyce too. Somehow hearing that Kardashian does too makes me feel unclean.

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