What Gender is Your Writing Style?

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Margo
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What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Margo » February 25th, 2011, 12:56 pm

The Pimp My Novel blog's Friday roundup has a link to this site:

http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

...where you can past a sample of your work for keyword gender analysis. My female/male scores were close the two times I tried this, but it ultimately predicted my gender incorrectly both times. I'm curious what others get. Do I really write (just barely) like a guy, or does the program suck? :)
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

Guardian
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Guardian » February 25th, 2011, 1:17 pm

Thanks for this link Margo.

Let's see my results:
Where my male character is the lead, acting and speaking; Male (Female Score: 92, Male Score: 260)
Where my female character is the lead, acting and speaking; Female (Female Score: 367, Male Score: 98)

Actually I'm glad for this, because it seems these parts got the right tone and balance. :)

Down the well
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Down the well » February 25th, 2011, 1:20 pm

Hmmm, I tried it with a sample of both fiction and non-fiction and it predicted I was a female both times. My scores were within twenty points of each other - male/female. But I know I have been mistaken for a man on-line before.

It's kind of odd the way they break down certain words as male and female. Why is "the" male and "with" female?
Margo wrote:Do I really write (just barely) like a guy, or does the program suck? :)
Let's just say you ooze confidence, Margo. Very brawny of you. *grin*

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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Claudie » February 25th, 2011, 1:21 pm

I always get close male/female scores too, and I tried this with five different texts. It predicted male three times, and female twice. It didn't depend on the POV either.

If this means the program sucks... oh well. If it means I write for both genders... woot? I have no problems with that.
"I do not think there is any thrill [...] like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything." -- Nikola Tesla

Margo
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Margo » February 25th, 2011, 2:10 pm

Innnteresting. I tried a few comparisons. My early drafts predict female, my later drafts and work written with a male POV character predict male.
Down the well wrote:Let's just say you ooze confidence, Margo. Very brawny of you. *grin*
0_o

Uh. Well. Hmmm. I... There are a LOT of ways that could be interpreted. It's like those verification words we have to type in on blogs to verify we aren't a spambot before we can comment. Half the time it sounds like the computer is trying to seduce me in an Eastern European language, and the other half of the time I feel like I've just been called a name unfit for polite company. Occasionally I'm sure it's trying to suggest a name for a fantasy character.
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Sommer Leigh » February 25th, 2011, 2:30 pm

Margo wrote:The Pimp My Novel blog's Friday roundup has a link to this site:

http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

...where you can past a sample of your work for keyword gender analysis. My female/male scores were close the two times I tried this, but it ultimately predicted my gender incorrectly both times. I'm curious what others get. Do I really write (just barely) like a guy, or does the program suck? :)
I'll try this out when I get home, but if you wrote on your blog and here under a different name, something gender neutral, I would guess you were a guy most of the time.

Wow, that's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

What I mean is, at least here and on your blog, you don't project typical female traits or language choices. You tend to be very direct and aggressive with your intelligence and opinions. At the same time, your assertiveness is never intimidating, it is inviting of discussion, which I don't think is a male trait. I'm not psychologist, so I'm just grasping at well educated straws here. But if your fiction is anything like your writing here, I can see how you would be straddling the genders.
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Down the well
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Down the well » February 25th, 2011, 2:40 pm

Margo wrote:I
Down the well wrote:Let's just say you ooze confidence, Margo. Very brawny of you. *grin*
0_o

Uh. Well. Hmmm. I... There are a LOT of ways that could be interpreted. It's like those verification words we have to type in on blogs to verify we aren't a spambot before we can comment. Half the time it sounds like the computer is trying to seduce me in an Eastern European language, and the other half of the time I feel like I've just been called a name unfit for polite company. Occasionally I'm sure it's trying to suggest a name for a fantasy character.
Hmmm, something was definitely lost in the translation. Actually, I was making a reference to a post you made in a different but related thread about gendered voice and sounding masculine because of your confidence:


"I will say that I have what I would class as certain masculine communication tendencies when engaged in debate. On forums where my username is gender neutral, I am ALWAYS mistaken for male. In one case, I let the assumption stand for about a year before I clarified my gender to other regular contributors. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I debate from a place of confidence (lots of debate and public speaking in school and some at work) and address points of contention in a fairly logical, methodical, aggressive way, typically without the hedging language that females innately use when trying to build rapport, avoid confrontation, and foster an 'all points are valid' point of view. Logic language rather than feeling language seems to come off as male, which feeds alllll kinds of stereotypes." -- Margo

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3291


Your confidence comes through in your posts here and on your blog, which if someone didn't know you were a female might have them envisioning you as kind of brawny. :)

Margo
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Margo » February 25th, 2011, 4:37 pm

Interesting. Sommer, Down the well, thanks for the input. I would agree I present a lot of male communication tendencies. I hadn't really expected it to come across in my fiction, however.

[Spock eyebrow arch]

Fascinating.
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Sommer Leigh » February 25th, 2011, 6:58 pm

Wow this is weird.

So, after a couple of fiction samples, it definitely showed I was female. My female score was double my male score.

When I put in several blog entries? It guessed I was male each time. Not by as much as my fiction entries showed I was female, but enough to proclaim me male.

I would have thought I was the opposite of that. Who knew?
May the word counts be ever in your favor. http://www.sommerleigh.com
Be nice, or I get out the Tesla cannon.

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Quill
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Quill » February 25th, 2011, 7:54 pm

Margo wrote:Interesting. Sommer, Down the well, thanks for the input. I would agree I present a lot of male communication tendencies. I hadn't really expected it to come across in my fiction, however.

[Spock eyebrow arch]

Fascinating.
I wonder if there's any correlation between "gender" and writers who outline their fiction using highly detailed template models (vs seat of the pants writers) :)

I entered my first three chapters and pulled two "female" and one "male" reading. The male reading was close, and was for the chapter that still needs the most work. The female chapters were significantly weighted that way. For the record the project was pantsed and then heavily edited.

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cheekychook
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by cheekychook » February 25th, 2011, 10:16 pm

Interesting. I entered 3 scenes from my novel that are told from the male MC's pov....3 scenes from the female MC's pov...and 2 of my blog entries.

Results:

3 male pov scenes: all male
3 female pov scenes: all female
2 blog entries: both female

I guess that's good...seeing as I'm female and I was hoping to sound male in the male pov scenes. Bizarre though. Fascinating.
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by sierramcconnell » March 4th, 2011, 4:42 pm

I had to try it, too, since most people say I feel more masculine online. O_O

Female Fiction Passage - Female!
Male Fiction Passage - Male!
LJ Entry.......

....

MALE.

XD

I knew there was something up with me! :P

At least I write correctly~!
I'm on Tumblr!

The blog died...but so did I...and now I'm alive again! OMG.

marion
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by marion » March 31st, 2011, 9:03 pm

Cool! My opening paragraphs (a little over 100 words) came out male. And my narrator's male (and I'm female.) So that's reassuring!
Interesting that prepositions indicating location, and forms of the verb "to be", are read as "male". And personal pronouns are read as "female". But the pronoun "I" is gender neutral. Hmm. I would have tagged that one as male!

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CharleeVale
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by CharleeVale » March 31st, 2011, 10:47 pm

Tried it three different times. The two times I did Female POV, it said I was a man. The one time I did Male POV it said I was a woman.....

Not sure what this means. lol

CV

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Dana-Lynn
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Re: What Gender is Your Writing Style?

Post by Dana-Lynn » April 4th, 2011, 8:28 am

This is neat. Thanks for sharing the link.

:oD
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