In recent years a number of tests of authorship have been developed. Such tests are based on the examination of some habit, generally one which embodies the result of a choice frequently confronting any author in his composition. The test described in this paper is based upon the habit of placing, as the last word in a sentence, different classes of words.
Stylometry can be defined as the use of numerical methods for the solution of literary problems, most often problems of authorship, integrity, and chronology. As stylometry has been described it seems hardly more than the application of common sense to a literary situation. For example:It consists in collecting as many peculiarities of style and grammar as possible from these works [the dialogues of Plato], particularly the Laws, which are known, or for good reasons supposed to belong to the author's latest period, and observing the frequency with which these occur in other dialogues. If it is then found, e.g., that one dialogue uses commonly 100 of these, another but 60, it is reasonable to suppose the former to be nearer in time to the Laws, i.e. later.
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