I Write Like | Hacker News Reader

I Write Like

iwl.me

21 pointsDanielRibeiro26 comments

Heh! I open sourced it: http://www.codingrobots.org/p/iwl/index (or https://github.com/dchest/iwl)

Shared traffic stats here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745555

After submitting some of my longer HN comments, I think the tool is more accurate about what I write than how I write. My comment on the Russian space program (which included the name of their moon probe (Luna) many times) was similar to Joanne K. Rowling (Luna Lovegood), another comment about TCP specifics is apparently similar to Cory Doctorow's writing.

For statistical analysis of writing styles as opposed to content it would be better to ignore all subjects (like Luna, TCP, ...) and only concentrate on the remaining words that are independent of the discussed topic.

I tried three different writing samples and got:

David Foster Wallace (excerpt from blog post) Edgar Allen Poe (introduction to peer-reviewed journal article) Jonathan Swift (concluding paragraph from ibid)

I also tried:

The first few paragraph's of Wallace's Infinite Jest (he writes like himself)

The first few paragraphs of The Raven (Poe writes like HP Lovecraft), then the whole of The Raven (now Shakespeare), and first three paragraphs of The Masque of the Red Death (now Anne Rice)

The first three paragraphs of Swift's A Modest Proposal (Daniel Defoe).

I don't know much about literature--maybe e.g. Defoe's writing is similar to Swift's--but without seeing the reasons why I write like a particular author, I take these results with a grain of salt.

"I write like J. D. Salinger"

I don't think I've ever read The Catcher in the Rye, or in fact any of his other books, so I don't know if this is 'good' or 'bad'. It'd be interesting if there was some sort of measure of public opinion on an author to see how I rate (that's my ego talking) and also a comparison in % to how many other people got Salinger.

Just for fun, I put in the last paragraphs of The Sun Also Rises and got Douglas Adams.

I got Cory Doctorow as well (from the intro to The Little MongoDB book and a few other posts). We were both school by more or less the same system (Ontario) more or less in the same timeframe (8 year difference).

Interesting. Apparently I write like Cory Doctorow.

It would be nice if there was some easy/integrated way of viewing a quick excerpt of text from the author so I can see for myself the similarities.

I got the same result but yeah.. doesn't really mean anything unless they tell you how they come to that conclusion

YACD

19/20 posts I checked from my personal blog, I got Cory Doctorow.

For my professional copywriting and various web service blog posts I got overwhelmingly HP Lovecraft and Cory Doctorow.

H.P. Lovecraft. I aim for Hemingway but that's close so I'm happy.

Apparently I write source code like Arthur C. Clarke.

I did the same thing. Apparently my code reads like an Edgar Allen Poe work. Maybe I should get a Vincent Price impersonator to do the voice over for my next demo.

OK, I'll bite. I was hoping to learn a little something about myself, but I'm not sure I did. My results:

Blog Entry #1 (advice) - Arthur Clarke

Blog Entry #2 (humor) - Cory Doctorow

Blog Entry #3 (advice) - Stephen King

Blog Entry #4 (autobiographical) - David Foster Wallace

Blog Entry #5 (story) - Kurt Vonnegut

Blog Entry #6 (technical explanation) - Chuck Palahniuk

Blog Entry #7 (technical explanation) - Cory Doctorow

Standup Comedy Bit #1 (parody) - James Joyce

Standup Comedy Bit #2 (satire) - William Shakespeare

Standup Comedy Bit #3 (observational) - James Joyce

Standup Comedy Bit #4 (rant) - William Gibson

Standup Comedy Bit #5 (observational) - Stephen King

Poetry #1 - Chuck Palahniuk

Poetry #2 - Cory Doctorow

I ran my most recent 80 articles through iwl. Here are the results I got, grouped by author:

    David Foster Wallace: 22
    H.P. Lovecraft: 18
    Cory Doctorow: 8
    Edgar Allen Poe: 6
    Margaret Mitchell: 5
    Margaret Atwood: 3
    Dan Brown: 3
    Arthur Clarke: 2
    James Joyce: 2
    Douglas Adams: 1
    Oscar Wilde: 1
    William Shakespeare: 1
    Stephen King: 1
    Chuck Palahniuk: 1
    Isaac Asimov: 1
    Bram Stoker: 1
    Mario Puzo: 1
    George Orwell: 1
    Rudyard Kipling: 1
    Jane Austin: 1

Half of my articles apparently read like David Foster Wallace or H.P. Lovecraft.

Sounds great, but on one blog post i got Dan Brown, and on the other James Joyce. Seems a bit flaky :)

FWIW: I tried twice and got the same result both times. I'm jealous of the Lovecraft result someone else got. I keep getting someone I've never heard of. :-/

Even better, I Read Like: http://iwl.me/read/

Some one asked me if the time is limited when it records voice, or it detects when you finish reading. April Fools worked!

I got HP Lovecraft with this massive manifesto I wrote and never published a while back.

Got J.R.R. Tolkien, pleasantly surprised.

I write like David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace, whom I have never heard of.

(Looking him up: He died at age 46 and I am age 46...bad omen?)

..., whom I have never heard of.

This was the most pleasant outcome I got from launching IWL: people wrote that they never heard of some of the authors, or that they heard but never read them, and then told me that they'll go read their works.

I had a lengthy medical crisis, during which time I "didn't get out much" so to speak. I imagine that's a big part of why I hadn't heard of him. I also imagine my future will be richer. Perhaps at some point I will look into reading some of his stuff, though my plate is fairly full at the moment. :-)

Arthur Conan Doyle.

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