"I Write Like" Developer reveals criteria

A friend of mine sent me a link that provided comments about the "I Write Like" analyzer and in those comments I found another link to the analyzer creator's blog "Coding Robots".  As someone that has been interested in artificial intelligence since the 90s, I found the creator's comments on his blog  quite enlightening:

"Currently it analyzes vocabulary (use of words), number of words, commas, and semicolons in sentences, number of sentences with quotation marks and dashes (direct speech)."

I would like to know the rationale for developing this criteria.  I'm always curious about the choices a programmer makes when developing a program for a particular purpose.

I also enjoyed reading the user comments.  As I suspected the subject matter that really dictates many of the word choices is a key factor in the analysis.  Since I often write about archaeological excavations that yield skeletons or other types of forensic remains, it is no surprise that I got more hits on Lovecraft, a classic horror writer, than other authors. 

I also have a tendency to write fairly lengthy sentences and often include asides in parenthesis.  In blog posts I often quote from the original article that sparked my comment or from other works written by someone involved in the original activity I am writing about.  So an analysis of this type of work may be more of a reflection of the original material I am quoting from than my own.

One user actually fed the analyzer snippets of actual work from famous authors in its database and it got many of them correct.  It did miss on some but I'm sure even famous authors are influenced by other authors.

Of course there are always the flamers that are quick to criticize someone else's creative efforts.  When I developed my virtual Julius Caesar, people would try to ask him about things like the Colosseum that were not built before his death.  I explained to people in my introduction to the project that I was limiting his knowledgebase to things and events that occurred before his death.  But, many people jump into interactions without reading any introductory material and it is often these people who quickly dismiss (and loudly criticize) such a project because they ignore the programmer's parameters when attempting interaction with the bot. 

A number of the users of the "I Write Like.." tool complained that the knowledgebase did not include enough women authors and people of color.  It will be interesting to see how the tool evolves as the knowledgebase is expanded.


    

I write like Lovecraft, Shakespeare and Hemingway??

One of the blogs I am following mentioned an online writer's analysis tool that lets you paste in prose you have written and it comes back with an analysis comparing your writing to a famous author's.  So far, my various blogposts have come back as H.P. Lovecraft ("Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity... Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." - Wikipedia) - See my blogpost "Will New Spartacus ressurect old stereotypes?") and "Caesar's Fables and the Price of Fame".  I also got a couple of hits as William Shakespeare (See my review of "Ransom"  and my article "Mad, Bad and Dangerous Women of the Han") and even Ernest  Hemingway!  ("Why Sex  Rather Than Kissing Is Portrayed in Pompeiian Art").  A couple of my pieces were compared to Dan Brown (I wish they would earn me that much money even if I'm not a big fan of his "style")

Although the tool supposedly analyzes your choice of words and your "style", I would speculate that the result is more weighted by word choice.  I probably came up with more hits for Lovecraft , the horror writer, because I  often write about  archaeological  finds  and forensic evidence.  I'm not quite sure about the Shakespeare hits although  "Ransom" by David Malouf was a  more literary work and I quoted from some of it.  As for Hemingway, it could have been the subject matter!! 

Anyway, it's a fun exercise for those of us that do more than just a little casual writing for public consumption.  You can analyze your writing at:  http://iwl.me/

They also offer a newsletter you can subscribe to to get tips on improving your writing.

            

Review: Persona Non Grata by Ruth Downie

As senior surgeon for the 20th legion in Britain, Gaius Petreus Ruso has had to deal with everything from murdered bar maids to mystical stag men.   But when he returns home to his family's villa in southern Gaul after receiving a cryptic request marked "urgent", he's hardly prepared for what he finds there.  His sister has fallen in love with a gladiator, his brother is about to be sued by the swindling agent of the local senator, and the brother of his sister-in-law has gone missing in a suspicious shipping mishap.  To make matters worse, the the senator's agent drops dead of apparent poisoning in Ruso's study and Ruso himself quickly becomes the prime suspect.  What's a well-meaning but financially strapped medicus to do?

Although the scoundrel's last utterance points to Ruso's social climbing ex-wife who had married the man not realizing he did not own the sumptuous villa where he resided, the rascal appears to have also had contentious encounters with Ruso's step mother, sister, and even the voluptuous widow next door who is almost singlehandedly running an amphora manufacturing business.  Ruso's not even sure he can safely discount the man's grief-stricken sister. Furthermore, Ruso learns that the agent arranged for the worm-riddled vessel that his sister-in-law's brother disappeared in so he wonders if his brother's wife, the seemingly loving mother of his five rambunctious nieces and nephews, could have slipped something into the cool drink she offered the man when he came to the farm looking for Ruso.  

Fortunately, Ruso brought along his British housekeeper/lover Tilla, whose unassuming way of looking at events with the innocence of child, helps Ruso resolve his latest gaggle of delimmas without alienating his family or landing in the arena as the afternoon snack for the beastkeeper's bear.  Once again Ruth Downie has conjured up late 1st century CE Roman life and peopled it with characters that provide a panoply of suspects along with plot twists to keep readers guessing until the gratifying climax.

The ending leaves you wondering, though, if Ruso is going to give up the army life, settle down in Gaul and make an honest woman of Tilla.  I hope not.  I prefer the setting of a military infirmary or outpost in the wilds of Roman Britain to the more Romanized society of southern Gaul, although this book was certainly enjoyable.   Another aspect of the book that made me nervous was the introduction of the local cult of Christos and Tilla's involvement with it.  Fortunately, Downie invested the experience with humor created by Tilla's naivete about other religions and her effort to compare the new religion with those she is more familiar with.  I just didn't want the series to become a platform for idealizing early Christianity and promoting one religion of the period over others that were fervently and, in many cases, reverently practiced at the time.

I look forward to sharing Ruso and Tilla's next adventure.  Fortunately, a quick check on Amazon shows Downie will be releasing the next installment, entitled "Caveat Emptor", in December 2010.  The book description confirms that Ruso and Tilla do return to Britannia to investigate the disappearance of a local tax collector.  I see he's going to be in Veralamium, the Roman settlement that became St. Alban's.  I've actually been to the ruins of Veralamium so it should be great fun to read a story with that setting.