20 y/o lesbian here who’s written a lot of fiction.
Everything I put in scores as astronomically male.
Reminds me of the Graham Norton bit, “Gay or European?”
I think I’ve done this one before.
They always seem to peg me as male for some reason.
I don’t have any recent samples of formal work, it’s been a long time since I had to write a paper. But both my informal samples, which I took from recent forum posts, indicated “weak male” (I am actually female).
The last time I looked at an online gender-checker, it simply measured the proportion of active verbs to passive verbs. I don’t know if that’s the way *this *one works, but I don’t think active vs passive voice is a very reliable measure of gender. It’s more like a measure of good or bad writing skill. People who’ve learned how to write at the AP or college level are less likely to use the passive voice (unless they’re medical or scientific types, who pretty much have to use the passive voice in their career).
Yeah, look. No. It told me I was a dude, too. I’m not.
If it keeps misidentifying women as men (which it does over and over again, going by the posts in this thread), it’s not because we “write like men”, it’s because the thing is using some erroneous criteria to determine what “men” and “women” write like.
If you are a woman, the way that you write is how a woman writes. *Hope that helps. *
I don’t think they were in need of any help to begin with.
Do you not think men and women can have certain, distinctly identifiable writing styles and that it’s possible for a person to write like the opposite sex?
I believe that there might be a spectrum in writing styles, as there is in all human behavior, and that people of one gender might generally tend toward one end of the spectrum. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m willing to allow the possibility.
That doesn’t mean that women who tend toward one end or other of the spectrum “write like men”.
The test identifies women as men over and over. So either the test is faulty, or no, men and women don’t have distinct writing styles.
Or no women with writing styles identified as women are posting their results.
Yep, you’ve got a pretty small sample size here. I haven’t seen any of Anaamika’s writing, obviously, but I am not at all surprised to be told I write in a male style. I always have. It’s just the way I write.
nm
What’s the way you write?
Genre: Informal
Female = 14328
Male = 21522
Difference = 7194; 60.03%
Verdict: MALE
Genre: Formal
Female = 17089
Male = 14596
Difference = -2493; 46.06%
Verdict: Weak FEMALE
Weak emphasis could indicate European.
OK, this time to hell with the second person. I pasted in an article about vampires I published a couple of months ago:
Genre: Informal
Female = 3166
Male = 11353
Difference = 8187; 78.19%
Verdict: MALE
Genre: Formal
Female = 3806
Male = 6176
Difference = 2370; 61.87%
Verdict: MALE
It’s quite possible for such a thing to exist. The problem of limited sample size cuts two ways, however and just as it’s hard to say that the gender guesser is incorrectly labeling men and women, it’s hard to say that women here are writing like men on the basis of one or two samples. The algorithm, for example sees the use of personal pronouns like I, me, you and she as female indicators. Well, if you submitted a post of yours from, say GQ where you answered someone’s question, you may not have any pronouns at all, really and it will think you’re male but not because its style was particularly masculine.
If you could have it crawl your entire posting history, then it might be interesting what it says.
I submitted excerpts from 2 short stories that I entered in the SDMB contests.
*Genre: Informal
Female = 495
Male = 1195
Difference = 700; 70.71%
Verdict: MALE
Genre: Formal
Female = 352
Male = 576
Difference = 224; 62.06%
Verdict: MALE*
*Genre: Informal
Female = 2270
Male = 1561
Difference = -709; 40.74%
Verdict: Weak FEMALE
Weak emphasis could indicate European.
Genre: Formal
Female = 983
Male = 1026
Difference = 43; 51.07%
Verdict: Weak MALE
Weak emphasis could indicate European.*
Interesting because I personally thought 2) was written in a more masculine voice. The “formal” analysis (which, under their definition, is what my submissions were) did return the male verdict, but still weak.
Maybe the computer was thinking, “wow, you can chew on my rawhide anytime you want, babe!”
I write a blog about baseball, and I make a point to not mention my gender (female). I submitted my top 5 most popular posts and they all came up “weak FEMALE” some with like a -10 difference.
I always sort of felt my blog posts were a bit girly for baseball, so I’m not surprised.
I submitted an old Wonder Woman story that I wrote around 2003.
Here are my results :
Genre: Informal
Female = 291
Male = 682
Difference = 391; 70.09%
Verdict: MALE
I’m scared to try. Even if I butch up my writing style, it would probably call me a “weak male”. I don’t need that kind of abuse from a machine.
Oh, yeah? Your momma runs Vista!
I tried another story, and came up with these results :
Genre: Informal
Female = 2361
Male = 5501
Difference = 3140; 69.96%
Verdict: MALE