John Becker is a freelance writer and tutor with an extensive background in education and coaching in Connecticut. Among the academic courses John Becker taught were AP composition, language, and British literature. He also has a strong interest in the craft of writing.
One of the most unusual moves by a prominent British author in recent decades involved J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, taking the pen name Robert Galbraith and writing a series of well-received detective novels.
As reported in Smithsonian Magazine, Rowling’s authorship of the Cormoran Strike novels such as The Cuckoo’s Calling was not brought to light through a strategic leak from a sales-hungry publisher, but rather through the power of forensic linguistics.
This investigative technique was employed using proprietary software developed by a Duquesne University researcher, following an anonymous tip that Rowling might be Galbraith. The barrage of tests included analyzing patterns of adjacent words, ranking most common words, character sequences, and long- and short-word preferences. The end result was a “linguistic fingerprint” that catalogued stylistic quirks.
Running the test on The Cuckoo’s Calling and three other books by contemporary female detective authors revealed that Rowling was most likely the author of the book (which she later turned out to have penned). The half hour required to run the test was far shorter than the 3 years required in the 1960s by a high-speed MIT computer and two statisticians to determine the author of the dozen unsigned Federalist Papers.
One of the most unusual moves by a prominent British author in recent decades involved J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, taking the pen name Robert Galbraith and writing a series of well-received detective novels.
As reported in Smithsonian Magazine, Rowling’s authorship of the Cormoran Strike novels such as The Cuckoo’s Calling was not brought to light through a strategic leak from a sales-hungry publisher, but rather through the power of forensic linguistics.
This investigative technique was employed using proprietary software developed by a Duquesne University researcher, following an anonymous tip that Rowling might be Galbraith. The barrage of tests included analyzing patterns of adjacent words, ranking most common words, character sequences, and long- and short-word preferences. The end result was a “linguistic fingerprint” that catalogued stylistic quirks.
Running the test on The Cuckoo’s Calling and three other books by contemporary female detective authors revealed that Rowling was most likely the author of the book (which she later turned out to have penned). The half hour required to run the test was far shorter than the 3 years required in the 1960s by a high-speed MIT computer and two statisticians to determine the author of the dozen unsigned Federalist Papers.
