A DIVERSION: "I WRITE LIKE"

For the observant, you may have noticed the appearance of a new gadget down the left side of this blog proclaiming that "I write like Daniel Defoe."   This is a bit of fun that I stumbled across on another blog (unfortunately, I forget which).  It's a website, I Write Like, where you slam some text into a box and it's run through a bot that matches your writing style to a famous author.  Of course, there certainly isn't a result that tells you that your writing is atrocious, or that matches you to some awful amateur poser ("You Write Like Blogger Ed M"). 

For this exercise, I input the text of a piece I wrote for the Foreign Correspondent, which is also on this blog .  It seems clear to me that the linkage to an author from an earlier period derived from the quaint style I used in that piece, with the bot picking up phrasing like "dear reader."  Given my background and current employment, I am very well versed in the limitations of language algorithms.  In other words, I should know better than to be pleased at such a comparison, but as a guilty pleasure, I'll take it. For those who read and spend their time banging on keyboards (I'm lookin' at you, fellow bloggers), this is right up your quirky alley. 

Just out of curiosity, I tried inputting another block of text, one that had less affected language.  This time around, it matched my writing to the late David Foster Wallace, which I found of infinite jest.

I wish that they had Samuel Johnson among their authors--if so, I would keep submitting until I was matched to the Great Cham. Who wouldn't?  

Back to gaming in the next post (I think).

Excelsor!