I Write Like WHOM? LOL!

NPR recently aired a story about a new website, called “I write like” (http://iwl.me/) which uses sophisticated algorythms to analyze your writing style and compare you to a famous author.

The idea sounded intriguing, but everything I entered was compared to a different author, sometimes one I’d never even heard of. I decided to determine just how accurate these algorythms are by entering random paragraphs from actual famous authors.

For each of the results below, I entered a random paragraph from a book on my bookshelf (or a poem, in a few cases). Here are the results:


Abraham Lincoln writes like Dan Brown
Agatha Christie writes like Leo Tolstoy
Albert Einstein writes like James Joyce
Alfred Hitchcock writes like David Foster Wallace
Alfred Lord Tennyson writes like David Foster Wallace
Andre Norton writes like Edgar Allan Poe
Arthur C. Clarke writes like Dan Brown
Arthur Conan Doyle writes like Charles Dickens
Barack Obama writes like Stephen King
Bill Cosby writes like Dan Brown
Billy Graham writes like Kurt Vonnegut
Bob Hope writes like P.G. Wodenhouse
Carl Sagan writes like David Foster Wallace
Charles Dickens writes like David Foster Wallace
Dale Carnegie writes like George Orwell
Douglas Adams writes like Stephen King
Edgar Allan Poe writes like Charles Dickens
Edgar Rice Burroughs writes like Mary Shelley
Emily Dickenson writes like Leo Tolstoy
Fred Saberhagen writes like Stephen King
Garrison Keillor writes like David Foster Wallace
Gary Gygax writes like Isaac Asimov
Gene Roddenberry writes like Stephen King
George Burns writes like Isaac Asimov
George Carlin writes like Kurt Vonnegut
George Lucas writes like Dan Brown
George Orwell writes like Leo Tolstoy
George Washington writes like James Fenimore Cooper
Groucho Marx writes like Chuck Palahniuk
H.P. Lovecraft writes like Raymond Chandler
Harlan Ellison writes like J.D. Salinger
Ian Flemming writes like Margaret Atwood
Isaac Asimov writes like George Orwell
J.R.R. Tolkein writes like Stephen King
Jane D. Hull writes like David Foster Wallace
John McCain writes like Kurt Vonnegut
John Milton writes like James Joyce
John Norman writes like Charles Dickens
Jules Verne writes like James Joyce
Kurt Vonnegut writes like James Joyce
Leonard Nimoy writes like David Foster Wallace
Lewis Carrol writes like P.G. Wodehouse
Mark Twain writes like Lewis Carroll
Maya Angelou writes like David Foster Wallace
Ogden Nash writes like Mark Twain
Pohl Anderson writes like Douglas Adams
Ray Bradbury writes like Kurt Vonnegut
Richard Francis Burton writes like Arthur Conan Doyle
Robert A. Heinlein writes like Kurt Vonnegut
Robert E. Howard writes like H.P. Lovecraft
Robert Frost writes like Kurt Vonnegut
Roger Zelazny writes like Margaret Atwood
Rudyard Kipling writes like Oscar Wilde
Stephen Hawking writes like Dan Brown
T.S. Elliot writes like Margaret Mitchell
Terry Pratchett writes like Dan Brown
Thomas Jefferson writes like Leo Tolstoy
Timothy Zahn writes like Margaret Atwood
William Shakespeare writes like Johathan Swift
Zane Grey writes like Charles Dickens


I also found one and only one author who consistantly writes like himself: Leo Tolstoy.

After writing this article, I entered it into I Write Like. It says I write like Kurt Vonnegut.