Wednesday, July 6, 2011

One More

(I can't help it. I have to make sure people read this.)

INNOCENT BYSTANDER: I would love to test this software (authorship-attribution software which its makers claim has been helpful in identifying the various authors of different passages in the Old Testament) on my college papers. I doubt all of my papers have many similariti­es in style. Another test would be an entire collection of news articles from reporters.

CITIZEN 5: can a single paper/arti­cle have several different styles in it?

ME: Yes.

I was going to demonstrat­e that a single post of less than 250 words can have several radically-­different styles, but I haven't had my coffee yet.

CITIZEN 5: sure. but you'd actually need to make an effort of doing it (you even need coffee).

why would any serious writer would want to try and demonstrat­e she can write in different styles, just to show reader that she could?

that said, content analysis technique is very advanced nowadays, Donald Foster had identified Joe Klein writing just by analysing punctuatio­n marks, crimes are solved with the help of textual analysis; and even if you expressly try to differenti­ate your writing styles it would not differ so much that it would matter and confuse analysts.

ME: "why would any serious writer would want to try and demonstrat­­e she can write in different styles, just to show reader that she could?"

Because somebody asked

"can a single paper/arti­­cle have several different styles in it?"

But I realize now that it's not just the caffeine factor. You make me tired.

But I know now that it ain't just coffee, it's you, too.

But at the moment it occurs to me that lack of caffeine was not the only factor in my reluctance yesterday morning. There was also the exhausting prospect of trying to communicat­e with you.

No kawfee maik munkee taird. U2.

Aber es faellt mir jetzt ein dass es nicht nur Kaffee war. Du ermuedest.

(It's like the old joke: "Professor A, you look exhausted!" "Yes, I've been exchanging ideas with Professor B all day, and I feel positively drained.")

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