Stylometry and Attribution Studies
Susan Hockey · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2000
This chapter examines various procedures for authorship attribution. In particular, it looks at how quantitative analyses based on counts can be used. Such stylometric analyses can serve two main purposes, both of which would otherwise be very difficult to tackle in any systematic way. First, they can build an overall picture of a collection of material from the occurrences of certain features. Second, they can provide concrete evidence to support or refute a hypothesis about the material. Comparative studies based on quantitative and statistical analyses make it possible to determine whether the usage of some feature or set of features is significant and have provided much new evidence in some well-known cases of disputed authorship.