I was stuck at a loss for what to write today until I was given the suggestion to write about writing style. At first I didn’t know exactly where to go with that, but then I remembered this wonderful little site called I Write Like. What I Write Like does is analyze any text and compare it to famous authors. Of course, the system is not perfect, but it’s kind of fun to see who you get compared to. I once had a friend tell me I write like Albert Camus. Let’s see if I Write Like agrees! I’m going to analyze a couple of different samples of my writing and see if I get the same author more than once.
Sample 1: Reconciling Past, Present, and Future
IWL thinks I write like: P.G. Wodehouse. I have no idea who that is, so let’s turn to Google (which inevitably brought me to Wikipedia).
From Wodehouse’s Wikipedia page: “Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (
/ˈwʊdhaʊs/; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be widely read…
An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry,[1] Douglas Adams,[2] Zadie Smith,[citation needed] J.K. Rowling,[citation needed]and Terry Pratchett.[citation needed] Journalist and writer Christopher Hitchens commented, “there is not, and never will be, anything to touch him”.[3]”
Hmm. OK, I don’t mind that comparison. I’ll have to read some of his work to see if I agree.
Sample 2: Standing Up For Yourself Against Misconceptions and Stigma
IWL thinks I write like: Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
Sample 3: Paladino blasts press for lack of journalistic values
IWL thinks I write like: H.P. Lovecraft, author of . I got this same result for another one of my WEGO Health posts.
Sample 4: The iPad and Your (Health) Activism
IWL thinks I write like: David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest.
These results are really interesting to me. I never really thought about which authors I write like before. I wanted to believe that I have my own unique writing style, which I guess is still partly true. Maybe my unique writing style is that I write like several different authors?
Who does IWL think you write like? Do you agree with your analyses?