This is another great guest post from my intern, Laura Connell.
According to The Gender Genie, a free online tool that analyses your writing for feminine and masculine keywords, a man has written seven of my eleven Bad Language posts – this post is especially manly.
The Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by a team of Israeli scientists who study the effects of gender of linguistic expression. To investigate how gender influences writing Argamon, Koppel, Fine and Shimoni studied 604 documents including non-fiction and fiction writing from both men and women in a wide range of genres- 25 million words were analysed in total.
The research confirms popular perceptions about gender differences in writing:
Male writing style
- More determiners (a, the, that, these) and quantifiers (one, two, more, some)
- Male writers use more factual references, such as place, time and numbers
Female writing style
- More pronouns (he, she, herself, myself, we, our)
- Female writers choose grammatical terms that apply to personal relationships, such as "for" and "with," more frequently than men do
I’m a lady!
Moshe Koppel, one of the authors of the project, concluded that women are comfortable thinking about people and relationships, whereas men prefer thinking about things.
I suspect that my maths background has trained me to write about things as opposed to relationships, which is why my posts contain more determiners than pronouns.
When writing about people, Eye tracking and what it means for writers, I write like a woman. When writing about things and ideas, Gender Genie concludes that I am a man – the same is true for female writers at the Guardian newspaper.
I won’t be making a conscious effort to make my writing more ladylike, after all it’s just my inner maths geek that writes like a man.
Intentional literary gender bending
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Ah… I dunno, man. I think this topic is interesting and all, because my industry’s one that deals heavily with language analysis (machine translation, translation memory, etc.), but I’m dubious about the point of research like this. Anything that serves to increase society’s dependence on gender roles always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I know that men and women’s brains are wired differently, and that does affect they way in which they process information… but, uh… yeah, I’m probably just pissed that The Gender Genie thinks I’m a chick >_<
LOL
The research does sound unsavory, and it seems that Gender Genie is not very successful in its job.
I think a good writer has control over style and can make it more objective or subjective at will.
Laura, my intern, wrote this and I think anything that helps you think about and understand your writing style is interesting. But as with all automated tools, you have to take it with a pinch of salt, don’t you?
Hi Zachary, I don’t think that Laura was suggesting that this increased society’s dependence on gender roles when she wrote this. It’s an interesting observation and an interesting piece of software. I think that anything that helps us be more mindful about our writing is worth looking at. If it’s useful, use it. If not, ignore it. Thanks for commenting!
Matthew
Hi Matt — thanks for responding!
I realize that this wasn’t Laura’s intention; that’s very clear. Rather, I’m curious more about the purpose behind the research itself.
Again, anything that progresses our understanding of (and mechanical ability to reproduce) language is a good thing
I think I just have default “meh” reaction to anything that tries to quantify what boys do VS what girls do.
Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear.
I understand and see where you coming from. I sorta agree with you. In general psychological studies in general give me the ‘meh’ feeling. But on a more fundamental level, and a bit off topic, experience shows that there are differences in the way men and women think. I’ve been married for years and I’m still trying to figure it out. But vive la difference!
OK, to clarify – Laura’s post was an interesting read.
The research itself sounds kind of pointless to me from a writer’s point of view. I still think that a writer should be able to focus more on “things” for one purpose, or more on “relationships” for another purpose.
Since both Laura’s and Zachary’s writing did not match their gender, it would seem that what you’re writing about and what you’re writing for (a feminine word there) is more important than gender.
Is there any research on which gender writing style is:
a) more readily understood,
b) easier to read, and
c) preferred by different types of reader?
I ask because my pared down, minimal tabloid writing gets ranked as very female, while my business journalism for my day job is distinctly male.
And before anyone asks. No, I’m not confused.
I don’t know about research like that. But it would be interesting to know. Matthew
Hey, Bill… are you confu — erm, sorry. Seems as if we’ve already addressed that.
A-hem
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