I write like  David Foster Wallace, according to I Write Like. The site employs a statistical analysis tool that analyzes a sample of your writing and matches it up with that of a well-known writer.

Any bit of text will work: blog post, Word doc copy, journal entry—pretty much anything other than a tweet.

According to Wikipedia:

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923–2006).

Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years.”

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

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What can you do to become a better writer? I can think of lots of things: 33 of them in fact:

  1. Write everyday no matter what.
  2. Edit the hell out of your copy and then edit some more.
  3. Listen carefully to everyone you meet, no matter how smart or dumb you think they might be.
  4. You can’t please everyone, so don’t try.
  5. Embrace life, have fun and make every day your best day.
  6. Use the active voice.
  7. Use the passive voice when you want to emphasize the recipient or victim of an action.
  8. Think for yourself.
  9. Omit needless words.
  10. Use as few adjectives and adverbs as possible.
  11. Use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences.
  12. Use infographics when you’re dealing with lots of numbers.
  13. Approach every writing job with the idea that you are going to do the best you can and nothing less.
  14. Think big; it’s just as easy as thinking small.
  15. Read everything you can get your hands on and analyze what you read.
  16. Write. Put your copy aside for as long as your deadline permits. Then edit.
  17. Use a hard copy dictionary because you never know what you’ll find when you’re just flipping pages.
  18. The same is true for grammar books.
  19. Try mind mapping.
  20. Keep a notepad next to your bed.
  21. Try writing standing up.
  22. Don’t wait until a deadline is staring you in the face before you start writing.
  23. Write in a way that comes naturally to you. To put it another way, use a conversational style.
  24. Write frankly and fearlessly.
  25. Go to the movies. Visit an art gallery. Listen to music. You never know where your inspiration will come from.
  26. Take risks.
  27. Keep you paragraphs short–three or four sentences each will do.
  28. Put your keywords up front.
  29. Put your keywords into your headlines.
  30. Don’t overdo punctuation.
  31. Break rules but only if you know why they’re rules in the first place.
  32. Use the present tense.
  33. Toss aside hyperbole and exaggeration.
  34. Check your numbers.
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iPad finger painting is more than child’s play

June 30, 2010

Check out artist David Jon Kassan’s paint-by-digits portrait on the iPad. He’s using Steve Sprang’s phenomenal Brushes app. Share This

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Social media according to Deloitte

June 28, 2010

Social media takes place in a hive, where everyone participates equally in the conversation. Sometimes you talk; sometimes you listen. Sometimes you lead; sometimes you follow. To discover how one company engages in social media, read Deloitte’s captivating report: Social Media at Deloitte: Participation, communication, transformation. Connecting through emails, blogs, wikis, web, video and photo [...]

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Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle iPad Apps Face-to-Face

June 23, 2010

Poor Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Almost from the day Apple’s iPad made its splashy debut, you just knew the e-book readers from the other guys were about to head down the path of extinction. To no one’s surprise, yesterday Amazon cut its Kindle reader’s price to $189 down from $259. At the same time, Barnes [...]

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Four sites every online writer should know

June 15, 2010

What follows is a list of four sites every Web writer should visit at least once: Poynter Institute’s mission is to train journalists, students, educators and others in online and multimedia writing and editing. While you’re there, check out Roy Peter Clark’s nifty list of 50 writing tools. Purdue’s Online Writing Lab, or OWL,  houses [...]

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About half of adult Americans watch online videos

June 3, 2010

About half of all American adults have watched videos online, according to a new study of online video viewing habits conducted by the Pew Research Center. Seven in ten adult Internet users (69 percent) have used the internet to watch or download video, according to the study, whose results were released Thursday. That represents 52 [...]

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10 tasty iPad apps for writers

May 28, 2010

If you’re a writer, the first iPad app you probably downloaded was Pages, Apple’s word processing app. Now, what else do you need? Here are 10 tasty treats you’ll want in your digital lunch box: 1. Adobe Ideas 1.0 for iPad – When inspiration strikes while you’re out and about, Adobe Ideas is a good [...]

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Writing headlines for searchbots, not readers

May 17, 2010

“Headlines in newspapers and magazines were once written with readers in mind, to be clever or catchy or evocative. Now headlines are just there to get the search engines to notice.” – Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline, by David Carr, The New York Times Share This

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Facebook fun facts

May 13, 2010

Think you know Facebook? Check out this infographic from Online PhD Programs: Share This

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