[Catherine Chandler]

Out of curiosity I entered six of my 14 by 14 sonnets and the result was almost two-to-one male.

[Mark Allinson]

Summing up all the responses here, I would have to say that the GG is absobloodylutely useless.

Mary thinks the GG has it right to identify Shakespeare as a woman, but it also identified Spenser and Donne as women, which is patently absurd.

So if a complex computer programme can't consistently pick the correct gender, can anything or anyone do it?

Is there really any discernible difference then between men's and women's writing?

[Susan McLean]

Most good writers have a blend of reason and emotion that makes them very hard to fit into gender stereotypes. It is only stereotyping that assigns personality characteristics to a particular gender instead of recognizing the broad continuum in which the majority of people will fall somewhere in the center. Men's and women's writing may have some variations in content based on differences in their experiences; I have never noticed any predictable differences in their style.

Susan