Find your writing doppelganger at I Write Like
August 6, 2010
The “I Write Like” website is an interesting diversion that could lead to some interesting conversations around text analysis. And it is sort of fun to see which famous writer will pop up when your own piece of writing is put into its analysis engine.
“I Write Like” takes your text and looks for similarities to professional writers. When it has finished its comparison, the site gives you a “badge” that you can embed in other websites. When I inserted some text for an article I was writing around bullying and technology for a local newspaper, the site informed me that I was writing like Cory Doctorow. I haven’t ready quite enough of Cory Doctorow to know if this parallel writing style is true, but I did follow the link to Doctorow’s book site and began perusing some of his work.
And maybe that is the benefit of this site: it piques your interest as a writer. Why am I like Stephen King? What choices do I make as a writer that puts me into the same category as Agatha Christie?
In the Classroom
First of all, there is advertising on this website, so be aware of that. Also, the veracity of the analysis may be suspect since I could not really find any information on the exact nature of how they are comparing my words to other writers. But with high school and college writers, this site might be an interesting way to discuss the nature of our writing styles and how we can be influenced by what we read. A student could make some conjectures about why they were compared to whatever writer pops up in the analysis engine.
