Forums » Smalltalk » Gender Writing Styles

I'd come across this tool awhile back, but only recently looked it up again. Similarly to when I tried it out before, it has a lot of trouble identifying my gender, swinging back and forth a lot both by how much I enter (it'll even switch twice as I simply add to what's there) and by what character I happen to be writing (in example, I apparently write Calvmic a significantly more masculine than either Gregor or Green Mike, which, really, isn't surprising). Amusingly, it usually leans toward male for me.

So what about you? Does your wording match your gender?

According to what I've posted thus far: I either write Male or Weak Female.

I'm not sure what exactly it's counting as "male" and "female" word-wise, but I imagine that more people are going to come out male than female.

I also dunno if pronouns help sway the deciding factor. Even writing as a female character, it came out "weak female". So...*shrugs* Definitely NOT fail proof.

Female, or Weak Male

Interesting!
I analyzed three posts that I'd made as my male character, Takurasho, and my results were male/male.
I then analyzed three posts that I'd made as a female character, Sabbath, and got weak female/female.
Then again, my writing style tends to shift a little based on the personality of my characters: Takurasho is extremely formal, so my wording is more eloquent, where as Sabbath is aloof and the vocabulary in her posts tends to be more relaxed.

How did you stumble across this? I don't have much of anything to enter into it personally, but its super neat.

It's something that was mentioned a long time ago on another forum I used to frequent. I remembered it, and decided to look it up again.

Pasted in a post with actual content and got weak female (43%) and male (60%). I always find the content you post interesting, Nova.

Aw, you give me the warm fuzzies. ^^ Heh, I just try not to post too much dumb stuff.

I tried out a few samples with different characters, and the analysis reflected the gender of the character so I suppose it changes for me.

They do. more importantly type of pronoun. Weak just means you write like a european. I apparently use more female like than male. but not by much. This tool looks at words/things that bring involvedness and also at use of particular pronouns I, she, he in particular. I am thinking if I typed a bit more like I would if I were to be speaking in person and not as my char I would probably look more male to it. Well pronouns are looked at for female writing, words that are called specifiers are markers for male writing. The document that was linked to was quite interesting to say the least, well linked to on the page. When I write a post for a character apparently I write weak female. By weak it is meaning european as apparently this is because the weight matrix is biased for distinguishing genders in American English.

Informal writing I got weak male, formal gave me male. Neat program!

I've gotten a few different results with the same character. It looks like when I'm posting mainly DM-y stuff, the actual plot, I write as Male/Weak Male. Or Weak Female/Weak Male.

When I'm actually writing as the character, it's Weak Female/Female.

I don't really have any male characters though x:. So can't try it with them ahah.

All results MALE... Okay I don't think I should be worried >w>

Whether I write down posts I've made with my male or female characters, the results are always the same. I get the Weak Male results, which is apparently a European trait. Well, I just learned things.

Yup it is refering that they found that generally european males and females write a bit more similarly than american males and females.

I'd be interested now to submit about 300 words worth of various European authors and American authors to see if it identifies them correctly... I should do it, but I'm too lazy.

Anyone else wanna take a stab at it?

Nope, I'm too lazy to much care if it can. I'm just relaying what the study found and what it is looking for. Supposedly men are more specific while women use more things to draw in readers. I apparently write like a woman in formal writing, informal I am a man, I find it a bit confusing to say the least. If I submit less than 300 words though it says weak man for formal so yeah.

Male American writers:
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" received MALE/MALE.
Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild" received MALE/MALE.

Male English writers:
J.R.R Tolkien's "The Hobbit" received WEAK MALE/MALE
George Orwell's Animal Farm received MALE/WEAK FEMALE

Female English:
J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" received WEAK MALE/MALE, but when I removed the dialogue between Harry and Aunt Petunia from the excerpt it received WEAK MALE/WEAK MALE

That's about all the copy/pasting I'll do for now, I think, but this was fun to experiment with!

>decides to check out thread to see how its going
>notice large new post
>impressed by user initiative

I did not expect that. Libertine, way to engage CHALLENGE ACCEPTED mode.

Great job, Libertine!

Haha, that's funny how they turned out. Not what I would have expected, that's for sure!