# Was this sentence written by a human?... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 21, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823 "2014-12-21T15:37:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/1 "2014-12-21T15:37:43Z")
…And if so, in what original language? > [@](#): > > Investigators consume diagonally a bizarre fish which is totally novel to technical municipal. The odd chunk is that this fish is exposed in the cordial waters on the earth, situating a fresh record for fish complexity by breathing 26,715 feet underneath the marine surface. It’s attributed to a _[Dennis Engel](http://www.thecapitalwide.com/author/dennis/)_, in the article linked [here](http://www.thecapitalwide.com/1797/live-fish-species-found-under-the-ocean-surface/). The site looks like some sort of news/article aggregator. But do these aggregators now try to compose their own content? ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/2 "2014-12-21T15:45:12Z")
The last three paragraphs of that article are also strangely-written. No clue about that first sentence though! ETA his brief bio: > [@](#): > > I am an experienced and dedicated senior writer at The Capital Wide, very passionate about my work and self-motivated, organized and hard-working, after getting experienced I am expert in writing about the topics related to the business. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/3 "2014-12-21T15:52:48Z")
OK, in skimming a few other articles on that website it’s a content site written by people who don’t speak English as a first language. The names and photos of the contributors are most likely fake. Go to the [home page](http://www.thecapitalwide.com/) and you’ll see what I mean. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/4 "2014-12-21T16:16:10Z")
Yeah, I looked at the author’s ‘bio’ and home page as well. Couldn’t make sense of any of it and concluded it was some sort of aggregator. But the sentence structures are so bizarre that I can’t imagine it’s written by anyone with even the most basic ESL skills. So I’m tempted to think it’s ‘bot’ content as well. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/5 "2014-12-21T16:17:53Z")
The article is probably a computer rewrite of a human-written article. There are many sites which take articles and headlines from legitimate sites, rewrite the whole thing, and put them up on their own site. The goal is to make a buck from advertising, but they can’t just copy the content word-for-word because Google penalizes that. Once upon a time, people rewrote the articles, but nowadays, most of it is done by automated programs that use word cyphers. So you wind up with abominations like that. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/6 "2014-12-21T16:22:28Z")
Yeah, and “Dennis Engel” is actually [Michael Engel of University of Michigan](http://www.engin.umich.edu/che/people/faculty/michael-engel). Someone should probably let him know. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/7 "2014-12-21T16:24:10Z")
I agree. Out of curiosity (and because back in the 2000s I wrote masses of content myself) I checked the [whois domain page](https://who.is/whois/https://www.thecapitalwide.com). Site owner shares a name with an Indian film director, site is registered in Karachi Pakistan, was started in September 2014 and oddly enough, the phone number in the privacy statement goes to a Greek restaurant in Detroit. Since the content there is clearly a mish-mash of plagiarized content and weirdly translated English, the whole site could probably be taken down under the [DMCA](http://legacy.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm) law, if anyone were to pursue it. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/8 "2014-12-21T16:28:36Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Yeah, and “Dennis Engel” is actually [Michael Engel of University of Michigan](http://www.engin.umich.edu/che/people/faculty/michael-engel). > > Someone should probably let him know. Good catch! I just emailed Michael Engel. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/9 "2014-12-21T17:46:10Z")
Wow. I don’t even know what “mustard apples” are, but I’m disgusted too! I hope I don’t subsequent to demise! ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/10 "2014-12-21T18:00:13Z")
It must have originated with a human. Machines would produce much more comprehensible text. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/11 "2014-12-21T19:51:39Z")
It may be a bit of both, actually. If a person who didn’t speak English tried to use Google Translate to put something together, that kind of looks like how it might come out. Translation software can really screw up a sentence (it can help a lot, too, but you have to know how to use it and know at least a little bit about the destination language.) ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/12 "2014-12-21T21:06:34Z")
The real Michael Engel just emailed me back - at least one other person had also let him know. He’s called it a form of identity theft and will be contacting the site owner asking that they take the photo down. Which means that all of the “author bios” on that site are fake (as I said in post 3). Entire site is stupid and bogus anyway; I can’t seeing them staying viable for very long. **QuickSilver** I am curious, how did you stumble across this gem? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/13 "2014-12-22T04:38:36Z")
The article appears to have been completely rewritten, making me thing that this was originally an automatic translation of an article in another language, which is posted to get the information out there, and then rewritten by humans later. It still clearly is not written by a native speaker, but it now makes a lot more sense. I’ve found [an article](http://geekinfinite.com/news/2014/12/researchers-unveiled-new-fish-species-living-26715-feet-underneath-sea-surface/) that seems to be the original, or, more likely, a better translation of the original, since it’s still not written like native English. Analysts have gone over a strange fish which is totally new to scientific community. The odd part is that this fish has been found in the deepest waters on the planet, setting another record for fish profundity by living 26,715 feet underneath the sea surface. If anyone knows a language where “consume diagonally” can mean “gone over,” you’d have the original language. I’d hoped that 26,715 feet was an overly precise conversion from metric, but no such luck. It’s a pretty good conversion for 3,143 meters, and suggests that the original was probably in feet. As for the author, that’s probably just a fake bio to cover up for less reputable writers. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/14 "2014-12-22T07:28:32Z")
The quote in the OP sounds strangely similar to a number of fairly recent OP posts by a certain user right here on this board. Could it be . . . ? ---
**Author:** ![Cinnamon\_Imp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@Cinnamon\_Imp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cinnamon_Imp)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/15 "2014-12-22T10:11:25Z")
You took the words right out of my mouth. Or off my keyboard anyway 😉 ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-this-sentence-written-by-a-human/707823/16 "2014-12-22T11:44:51Z")
> [@chiroptera](#): > > **QuickSilver** I am curious, how did you stumble across this gem? I use Google News app to catch up current events and one of the sections is News in Science. This was the top article. Which makes me question how good Google News is at selecting reputable news sources. Others have complained that the app has become quite poor as far as selecting reputable sources. I think I’m starting to see what they mean. P.S. the “other” person that reported this to the owner of the photo was me. Normally I’d just mind my own business but this seemed like such a weird article and turned out to be such an egregious form of identity theft, I just thought I’d do the man a kindness. I’m sure it’ll come to bite me in the ass in some way or another. 😉