gender genie!
i found this is the nanowrimo forums, which i still lurk from time to time in search of interesting things to read. i'll have to find the one on people who hate nano. that was a hoot.
anyway this cute little tool can tell your gender by the way you write by analyzing certain key words. there's a definite difference in the way men and woman communicate, for instance, a woman might say, "it's a nice day, isn't it?" whereas a man might say "it's a nice day." women, it may be infered, are looking to engage in conversation, be agreeable or have the assertion affirmed by a second party for a variety of reasons. men don't tend to mince words nor do they seem to care about getting their buddies involved. can you imagine the sports bar conversations they'd have? i have one running through my head right now. it needs to stop.
anyway, i stuck in four pieces of fiction. and it told me the writer was male every single time. the most overwhelmingly male piece was "a whisper in the ghost," a short story that can be found on my website, talon's tall tales (link over on the side there), under the "BONUS!!" section of starbursts and shadows. why is it so overwhelmingly male? i don't know. it counts certain words as male and others as female. it's a usage thing. maybe because a majority of the writers i read are men, i've picked up on their usage. if i'd been reading nothing but danielle steele and the like, i'm sure it would have been a different story. of course, the fact that the first person narrator of "a whisper in the ghost" is male may have influenced that just a bit. but this just reaffirms my belief that i'm a man trapped in a woman's body. writing isn't the only thing i do like a man.
go to http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php to try the gender genie on your own writing.
happy holidays to all. i wish you all peace both in your hearts and in your homes.