TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

E-books and gender: Sentence length a factor?

By David Rothman

First off–a caveat. You can’t shrug off electronic books as for men only. Just consider all the women writing e-romances, even as far back as ‘99. That said, men are probably still the main readers of e-books. Part of the explanation is the traditional male love of gadgetry (whoops–time for a second caveat to acknowledge that exceptions abound).

But could something else also count, sentence length? Original e-books often have short sentences and short paragraphs to compensate for the very real failings of typical hardware. And could men enjoy short sentences more than women do? Sounds trivial. But it might not be if you’re an e-book writer or publisher trying to get a good handle on your audience, or if you’re selling a big-screened tablet such as the Cybook, which can better handle long sentence than can a little PDA.

Gender detector–for prose

Alas, I don’t know off-hand of a scientific survey I can quote about this in an e-book context. All I can do is recklessly extrapolate from what I just heard via On the Media, one of my favorite radio shows. Tech writer Clive Thompson talked of gender differences in the writings of men and women. With 80 percent accuracy, one computer program can even determine the gender of a writer.

The word is that women tend to use personal pronouns more, compared to men, and, to a greater extent, they also care more about people than about things. But there are other differences, too, including sentence length. Thompson quotes Deborah Tannen, an expert in gender and linguistics, who notes that the sentences in men’s magazines tend to be shorter than in women’s–even when the writers are female. Clearly the issue isn’t just that typical men write with shorter sentences; it’s also that they would seem to enjoy reading them. Part of this could be men’s enjoyment of action-oriented writing, where shorter sentences are better. But could other factors be at work as well?

Cybook: The ultimate e-book machine for women?

Now let’s apply this to e-books. Does the above mean that the ultimate e-book machine for women would be the Cybook, with its 10 inch screen? I don’t know. I can say that when I wrote about one Cybook owner with a sexually indeterminate name, I was outrageously sexist and referred to “him” when I should have said “her.” Yes, it was a “she.” Then again, some women might be put off by the size of the Cybook and consider it more of a factor than the lengths of the sentences that it can display well. Hard to say. I myself enjoyed Madam Bovary (not exactly a pulp thriller in sentence lengths) more on a Cybook than on a PDA.

OK, my asbestos suit is on. Anyone else have some thoughts on gender and e-books–whether sentence-length-related or not? Email me or comment away.

Related: Also check out OTM’s segment on the Associated Press kowtowing to the newspapers and promising to do print-only versions of certain stories–with more context than the Web versions. Plus, OTM separately interviewed EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann and MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman (RealMedia link) on the file-sharing case before the Supreme Court.