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Plagiarism-Detection Software Confirms Shakespeare Play
mi tips us that software intended to help essay graders detect plagiarism has been used to attribute to Shakespeare — with high probability — a hitherto unattributed play, 'The Reign of Edward III.' It seems that the work was co-authored by Shakespeare and another playwright of the time, Thomas Kyd. "With a program called Pl@giarism, Vickers detected 200 strings of three or more words in 'Edward III' that matched phrases in Shakespeare's other works. Usually, works by two different authors will only have about 20 matching strings."
Some?
Try '200'. /At least/ try to read the summary before posting, otherwise you just end up looking silly. :)
Yup, using speech as a social status marker is what aristocrats use to make sure that everyone around knows what they are.
If you choose to express the paltry contents of your small mind in monosyllabic grunts, that is entirely up to you. Just don't expect it to be worth our while listening. There is nothing pretentious about making use of a rich language in evocative expression, whether that be in speech or written prose.
Some colleges advocate the dumbing-down of written prose into contemptible, footling little single-clause sentences such as "This is Spot. See Spot run....", and I have had enough of it.
It really is not that hard to plumb the depths of a multi-clause English sentence, any more than it is difficult to parse nested expressions in a well-written piece of program code. Furthermore, there is no reason why we have to limit ourselves to 200 words (reserved or otherwise) to reflect all the multifarious aspects of our existence.