I write like . . . H. P. Lovecraft

by Will on July 29, 2010

The Old Ones have spoken . . . or rather, this incredibly unreliable website has determined I’m a bad Lovecraft knock-off. Sound off in comments with your own results (via).

Tagged as: Lovecraft, writing

Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.

{ 15 comments }

1 Mark Thompson July 29, 2010 at 11:30 am

I came across this the other day. As with you, HP Lovecraft was my most frequent result – about half the posts I put in – but I also got a good amount of James Joyce, Isaac Asimov, and Cory Doctorow mixed in.

2 Will July 29, 2010 at 11:32 am

@Mark Thompson, Personally, I was shooting for Danielle Steele.

3 Mopey Duns July 29, 2010 at 12:42 pm

Fun fact. Any piece of correctly formatted correspondence you put in to the program will come out as David Foster Wallace. I have no idea why.

It’s actually a bit eerie.

4 Don Zeko July 29, 2010 at 1:10 pm

@Mopey Duns, I got the same result from academic writing. I tried different excerpts from several old papers, and every one was DFW. I guess everyone that uses footnotes is the same.

5 North July 29, 2010 at 1:28 pm

Anne Coulter??? Noooooo!!!

6 LawMonkey July 29, 2010 at 2:13 pm

I too wound up as H.P. Lovecraft, based on the first few pages of my law review Comment. (Appropriate; reading law reviews often costs me a few points of sanity.) A couple of my blog posts returned H.G. Wells and Cory Doctorow.

7 Jaybird July 29, 2010 at 3:10 pm

David Foster Wallace.

I think it’s because I say “I” a lot.

8 Christopher Carr July 29, 2010 at 11:19 pm

I was also David Foster Wallace, but I think it’s because I overuse hyphens. I got Cory Doctorow the second time around, and then H.P Lovecraft.

9 Transplanted Lawyer July 30, 2010 at 9:42 am

Ten samples produced these results, in alphabetical order:

Dan Brown: 1
Arthur Clarke: 1
Cory Doctorow: 1
H.P. Lovecraft: 4
David Foster Wallace: 3

First, a result that includes even one in ten incidences of “Dan Brown” is galling. Second, is “H.P. Lovecraft” code for “uses long sentences?” Finally, is “David Foster Wallace” code for “uses semicolons somewhat correctly”?

10 Christopher Carr July 30, 2010 at 9:52 am

@Transplanted Lawyer, I submitted a shorter excerpt of the long passage that gave me David Foster Wallace as a result, and the result of that one was William Gibson. I don’t really see much overlap between those two.

11 Jonathan July 30, 2010 at 7:59 pm

I put in two, and both times got Kurt Vonnegut.

12 Phranqulyn August 2, 2010 at 9:05 pm

Odd. I got David Foster Wallace multiple times. Never having knowingly read any of his work, I got a collection of essays from my local library to sample. The excerpts I’ve presented to friends and family are some decent writing, and all agree that there is an odd similarity to my style of both writing and speaking.

On the other hand , I uploaded a lengthy quote by Robert Heinlein, which was analysed as Cory Doctorow.

13 Banzai Bunny August 3, 2010 at 8:10 am

It says I write like Annie Rice, who is presumably Anne Rice’s talentless niece or something.

14 JosephFM August 4, 2010 at 5:53 pm

First try from an academic paper got Cory Doctorow.

The second one, from an old locked Livejournal post, got Stephen King.

15 Pat Cahalan August 12, 2010 at 1:28 am

Edgar Allen Poe.

Pardon me while I go soak my tortured mind in some despair.

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