I Write Like

[Brian]

Stumbled across this website "I Write Like" and plugged in a recent post I'd made out of curiosity. Said I write like David Foster Wallace.

 

WHO?!? I'd never heard of him.

 

So I pasted in another fairly lengthy post. Arthur C. Clarke.

 

OK, I'd heard of him.

 

Let's try another...

 

I ended up analyzing more than a dozen of my TDB posts (maybe closer to 20) and I got a number of one-offs (Edgar Allen Poe, Isaac Asimov, Cory Doctorow (whom I'd also never heard of), and several others) but the two names which came up over and over were those first two: David Foster Wallace and Arthur C. Clarke.

 

So now I'm wondering how deep their database is. Has anyone else played with this site? I'm curious whether the same small set of names show up for everyone and whether other people see a pattern of consistency emerging from the analysis of multiple runs, as I am.

 

 

 

 

Of course, now I have to go read Infinite Jest...

 

[Marblehead]

I've not been to the site but I have been told that I write very similar to the way I talk in open conversation.

[Golden Dragon Shining]

I tested 10 comments, results are

David Foster Wallace + 1
Bram Stoker
Arthur Conan Doyle + 1
James Fenimore Cooper
Kurt Vonnegut
Oscar Wilde
Dan Brown
James Joyce

[Zhongyongdaoist]

This is an amusing little hobby you have found here Brian.

A curious application of the serious science of Stylometry

 

For the fun of it I put in four of my posts from Dao Bums and ended out with four different authors, ranging from Daniel Defoe (from my writings on Agrippa) to A. C. Clarke (my humorous improvisation on the "ineffable").

 

For what it's worth we also share Cory Doctorow.

 

Basically the size of each of the writing samples analyzed is relatively small, and thus can be misleading.  Which is why my first two choices, the Agripp excerpt and my "discourse" on the ineffable were written in very different styles.

 

For what it is worth, my post on the "ineffable" is far more like how I am in person.  Really, I am a very funny guy, all appearances to the contrary.

 

[Brian]

This is an amusing little hobby you have found here Brian.

 

A curious application of the serious science of Stylometry

 

For the fun of it I put in four of my posts from Dao Bums and ended out with four different authors, ranging from Daniel Defoe (from my writings on Agrippa) to A. C. Clarke (my humorous improvisation on the "ineffable").

 

For what it's worth we also share Cory Doctorow.

 

Basically the size of each of the writing samples analyzed is relatively small, and thus can be misleading.  Which is why my first two choices, the Agripp excerpt and my "discourse" on the ineffable were written in very different styles.

 

For what it is worth, my post on the "ineffable" is far more like how I am in person.  Really, I am a very funny guy, all appearances to the contrary.

Indeed, I stumbled across that site during a brief foray into stylometry, while looking for some free tools to try for a little project.

 

I, too, noticed that my Clarke matches were on more light-hearted posts and the Wallace posts on more serious one. The longer and less jargon laden the post, the more consistent the results seemed -- and the tone of the post seemed to foreshadow in which of those two buckets the results were likely to land. It became a fun little experiment!

Edited January 13, 2017 by Brian

[Zhongyongdaoist]

It is not exactly stylometry, but as an amusing aside, in High School, oh so long ago, I managed to astonish one of my English teachers by writing a perfectly formed sentence that was more than a hand written page long.  She said it was like reading Aristotle.  I hadn't even thought about how long it was when I was writing it, but I guess all that sentence diagramming paid off.

[liminal_luke]

Chuck Palahniuk (1)

David Foster Wallace (4)

Cory Doctorow (1)

Stephen King (1)

 

Is there a Cliff Notes for Infinite Jest?

[Stosh]

I got a H P Lovecraft , Fennimore Cooper , and David Wallace. ,, umm I dont see much in common between these writers, expect maybe they wrote like Me.

 

I tried some others, apparently Melville wrote like Robert Louis Stevenson ,and Chuang tzu wrote like Isaac Asimov and Winnie the Pooh wrote like Mark Twain.  Since it does seem to make some sense to draw those comparisons , I figure there may be something in the comparison.

 

An excerpt from the bible suggested ,,,,,,,,

  Harry Harrison

Photo by Szymon Sokół. CC-BY-SA 3.0

Harry Harrison (born March 12, 1925) is an American science fiction author best known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), the basis for the film Soylent Green (1973). He is also (with Brian Aldiss) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Stosh

[Stosh]

Clicking on the icon which you have , Brian, for stylometry , I was directed to the wikipedia entry ...

From wikipedia 

 

"In time, however, and with practice, researchers and scholars have refined their approaches and methods, to yield better results. One notable early success was the resolution of disputed authorship in twelve of The Federalist Papers by Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace."

 

Which is probably more than coincidental, considering how many of us ' write like' him     Indeed, the first time I quoted from the Bible I got a correlation with James Joyce, BUT , when I randomly picked a spot that didn't have 'Lords' strewn through it , I got Mr Harrison the fiction writer.  I suspect that emotion laden words , key phrases , and anachronisms will weigh heavily. 

 

 

Re: the writing of ..

DF Wallace ...manic, human, flawed extravaganza

 

Wallace's fiction is often concerned with moving beyond the irony and metafiction associated with postmodernism.

 

(actually the other David Wallace is david L wallace  but its still an odd coincidence )

Edited January 13, 2017 by Stosh

[Ell]

I got Dan Brown, some guy named Cory Doctorow, and then JK Rowling.

 

....when do I get my money?

[Brian]

I got Dan Brown, some guy named Cory Doctorow, and then JK Rowling.

 

....when do I get my money?

PM me your credit card info and your bank account numbers and your money will be mailed to you right away. Please allow 600 days for processing and delivery.