Do You Write Strong Manly Prose? Find Out at Gender Guesser

The Gender Guesser is based on some research done in 2003 by a team of researchers from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Bar-Ilan University in Israel who developed a method to estimate gender from word usage. Basically you paste in some text and the Gender Guesser provides a score letting you know how likely the writer is to be male or female.

I've plugged in several of my columns and they generally score male, but some show up as "weak male." Not to worry, "weak male" or "weak female" scores may just mean that one is writing like a European.

In addition, I scrounged around on Web for for some Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Willa Cather and Margaret Mitchell. Their scores tended to cluster in the range of weak male and female. Next, I input some recent op/ed columns by George Will, Maureen Dowd, and David Brooks. Pretty much the same result. '

When you have an idle moment, try your hand at gender guessing by throwing in some of your own writing or that of authors in whom you are interested here.

Kudos to frequent commenter Rimfax for the link.