{"id":6517,"date":"2017-04-12T07:13:04","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T11:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6517"},"modified":"2017-04-13T07:44:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T11:44:35","slug":"women-and-men-just-dont-do-that-in-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6517","title":{"rendered":"Women (and Men) Just Don\u2019t Do That (in Books)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"whispering\"

Muttering and Murmuring – photo: Lexe-l, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Excerpts from an entertaining new book by Ben Blatt, self-styled \u201cdata journalist,\u201d are appearing all over the place. Nabokov\u2019s Favorite Word is Mauve<\/a><\/em> summarizes much fascinating research he\u2019s done with a pile of literary classics and 20th century best sellers on one hand and a computer on the other.<\/p>\n

A recent Wall Street Journal<\/em> article<\/a> (paywall) tackles the question of whether men and women characters in books behave differently. The short answer is \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authors are more likely to use words like \u201cgrin\u201d when speaking about male characters and more likely to use the tamped-down \u201csmile\u201d when referring to females. Men shout, and chuckle; women scream, shriek, and shiver. Sometimes a male character may scream (under extreme torture, I suppose), but he would never shriek! As IRL, men are more likely to murder. Female characters murmur; male ones mutter.<\/p>\n

Blatt uses his database of novels to expose authors\u2019 general writing patterns and writing trends over time. Based strictly on the numbers, here are some of his results, which I\u2019ve culled from stories on Smithsonian.com<\/a> and NPR<\/a>:<\/p>\n