The latest meme

[unixronin]

...seems to be this site that claims to analyze what famous writer you write like.  On the evidence of my friends page, it likes to compare people to Steven King.  So I plugged a couple of writing samples into it.

First, I pasted two different sections of the outline of the same unfinished SF story, one outlining the opening events of the story, one a worldbuilding section covering the historical timeline, and got Douglas Adams and James Joyce.  The first piece was, in the words of Douglas Adams, 'almost, but not quite, entirely unlike' anything Adams ever wrote; the second bore no resemblance to anything James Joyce ever wrote, but contained the name Finn mac Cumhal.  Then I pasted in an excerpt from a second story, a cyberpunk work that bears — to me — visible resemblances to both William Gibson and Neil Stephenson, and got Dan Brown.

In short, I think it's utterly smoking crack.  I don't think it's doing any kind of style analysis at all, just picking out a few key words and matching them to lists.

Comments

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

I fondly remember a software program I had back in the days of Win98 (or was it Win95?) called Gram*a*Tic (I think I spelled that right) which did all the following:

Grammar Analysis
Spell Checking
Punctuation Correction
Style Analysis (professional, academic, literary, etc.)
Reading Level assessment

It was a terrific tool for anyone who wrote regularly, and helped me to fine-tune my writing to specific target audiences. I wish something as good were still available, but these days it's painfully obvious to anyone who uses the internet that even getting people to use free spell checkers isn't happening.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, you find evidence of what I call the spellcheck demon everywhere. Real words, properly spelled, but nowhere near the *right* words . . .

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

Very true, and if I made such an error in my comment, I offer my apologies.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

No matter how powerful the assistive tools, the sufficiently stupid will always manage to overcome them.

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO! True.