ready to get sexed up?
then definitely check out the gender genie. it's kinda nifty. you enter some text and it predicts whether the writer is male or female. i put in some of my blog entries and it correctly guessed i was female 2 out of 4 times. i always thought my writing style here made it obvious i was female, but apparently not. androgynous? i don't know. maybe. girly-girl? definitely not.
linguists behind this project propose that men and women write in markedly different ways and that one can determine a writer's gender by analyzing their text's syntax and their use of particular keywords. they suggest that the male style is characteristically "informational" and the female style is "involved". not yet sure if this is a crock-of-shit or not, but hey--skepticism is normal.
think about it for a moment. there are so many different types of writing-- academic, professional, journalistic, creative, or technical writing vs. diary or letter writing. their purpose, context and target audience are so different. diaries have traditionally been a female medium. so according to the gender genie, it would fall under the category of "involved writing" because it is more likely to be personalized and inclusive as opposed to just-the-facts. if you cut and paste your blog into the gender genie, will it guess you're female more often than not? my hypothesis is that it will, (even if you're a male diarist). despite it only being 50% accurate with me, i'm curious if my hypothesis will hold true for other people on diaryland.
for more info on the science behind this thing, go here. okay, now go let the gender genie sex you up.
