by Melanie Wilt, July 2010

I write like a man. Or, at least that is according to genderanalyzer.com, an online tool that analyzes online content based on 11,000 blogs on which it was “trained.” I take the incorrect assessment as a complement – not because I want to hide behind a male pseudonym, but because I admire the direct and concise style with which males communicate.

Much like handwriting analysis can indicate gender, two 2003 studies by Koppel and Argamon 2003 were able to guess with 83 percent accuracy through their gender analysis algorithms. At least one algorithm assumed men write more about objects, while women write more about relationships; women use more pronouns while men prefer quantifying and identifying words (a, the, that, one, two, more).

There are many excellent female writers, and I gravitate toward them as a female reader. I like to take in flowery prose, romantic stories and emotional fiction. But, as a business communicator, I want to emulate a more direct, professional style. Men write with a kind of pointed force that I appreciate. Other writing characteristics common of men (and yes many women, too) include:

Active Voice. Men tend to write in a more active voice than women. Active voice is a sentence structure in which the subject does the acting. For example, “Chad mowed the grass” is written in active voice. The same sentence in passive voice might read “The grass was mowed by Chad.” (If you still struggle with how to write in active voice, you can’t go wrong by reading the essential writers’ tool The Elements of Style by Strunk & White.)

Limited Adverbs. Adverbs can be effective in writing, but when used in correctly, they can really make for very boring copy.  It’s pretty effective to get to the point without equivocating over some rather ineffective adverb.  

Pithy Poignancy. Bill O’Reilly is not the only one who likes his writers to “keep it pithy.” Brief, direct writing engages readers and rarely leaves them guessing the writer’s point. I particularly enjoy crisp copy because this business-owner/mom-of-two doesn’t have a great deal of time to read about what’s happening in the world. It’s nice to have it delivered in a cogent package.

This particular gender analysis tool guessed wrong about my gender, so I’m not sure how much anyone should care about the results. But, analyzing your web site through www.genderanalyzer.com or your writing through www.Hackerfactor.com/genderguesser can be an entertaining exercise and make you more aware of the elements that contribute to your own communication style.