Writing like a girl

Wednesday, 12:58 pm

By Kate

I found reference to a little gizmo called The Gender Genie over at Chloe’s blog (Watermelon Punch) last night. This little gizmo claims that it can detect whether a writer is a male or a female by using some algorithm developed by some brainy people. The Gender Genie thought Chloe was male. Naturally, I had to try it, too. By cutting and pasting the last 9 blog entries (minus any outside quotes and tables) into the genie, I gave the genie approximately 7000 words to examine. The genie decided I was male, too. By quite a margin.

Interesting, I thought. Let’s try a long blog post from James Wolcott and a column each from Michael Ledeen and William Kristol. What d’you know? The Gender Genie correctly assumed they were male. Interestingly, male pheromones wafted so strongly off Ledeen’s column that it almost made the gender genie pass out. His male score was the highest of the bunch. Which, somehow, doesn’t surprise me.

Well, what about some women writers? I tested Molly Ivins, Anne Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Maureen Dowd. The Gender Genie believed they were all male. Especially Malkin.

Who might test accurately as a female, I wondered. Nora Roberts! She writes for women. Seemed as if she’d be a likely candidate to test positive for femaleness. Er, no. She scored solidly as a male writer.

So, who, exactly, scores as a female writer? I haven’t found anyone yet.

I don’t know the whys and wherefores behind the genie’s algorithm. But the page lists these as female keywords it tests for: him, so, because, actually, everything, but, like, am, more, out, too, has, since.

The male keywords are: some, this, as, now, good, something, if, ever, is, the, well, in.

That raises a couple of red flags. Any writing instructor I’ve ever had tried to practically beat the words ‘because’ and ‘actually’ out of our writing vocabularies as plainly bad writing. The inclusion of those words in the genie’s feminine keywords makes me wonder.

In any case, the Gender Genie still needs some work.