If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

- George Washington

Saturday 28 August 2010

Literary Analysis

Via Longrider, I came across this site: I Write Like.

You paste a slab of your text in the box, and it performs an instant stylistic analysis and tells you 'who you write like'. (I think that should be 'whom', but this is the Internet, after all.)

So I pasted the last post I made (Ouch!) and got this:


I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


Er, OK.

So I tried with the previous one (iPhone Bodge - update), and got this:


I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


Riiiiight.

Try the one before that (A Bridge Too Far?) - and I got this:


I write like
Douglas Adams

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


Well, I have heard of him, anyway. Pay and Dismay:


I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


So I tried again - same post:


I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


And once more (same post):


I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


I like this!

It all seems a bit random, to be honest.

To find the real answer, I just put the whole blog archive (excluding comments) into Notepad, and then copied it into the box. At last!


I write like
A Complete Dipstick

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


Got it.

(By the way, who is Cory Doctorow?)

4 comments:

  1. Apparently, I score HP Lovecraft more often than not, with an occasional dose of HG Wells and Mary Shelley. And, embarrassingly (hangs head in shame) one rating of Dan Brown, which I'm sure must trump Complete Dipstick by an order of magnitude!

    Cory Doctorow is a Canadian blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. (Yes, I looked it up!). I wonder if he gets the result "I write like Richard of Pembrokeshire", though?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I nearly put an irony alert on my last question, as I do know who he is. But, to be fair, I didn't when I started writing the post. Sort-of heard-of, but not in any detail. Sounds like an interesting chap.

    Dan Brown! Look, that isn't an insult, that is literary gold. Start your own blog with that writing style, and you'll be a millionaire within the month. You could call it Digital Fartress or Angels and Endos. Go.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'd feel better about Dan Brown if that hadn't been a letter to my insurance company, mostly quoting their own words back at them. Sadly, they're probably the ones headed for multi-millionaireship based on hack fiction. Perhaps they could call it "Adjuster's Reports".

    I thought you'd've done the research - it was more an excuse to be witty about the search engine they use for matching styles. On hindsight, perhaps it ain't quite Oscar Wilde, though!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'll make a confession: I like reading Dan Brown. As Orwell said, in his essay on Kipling, "an almost shameful pleasure, like the taste for cheap sweets that some people secretly carry into middle life." He's not a great writer (in fact, he's crap from any literary viewpoint), but if I want something to read in bed, Dan's the Man.

    ReplyDelete

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