347 He said, She said

The June 1 New York Times reported that Katherine L. Milkman, a senior at Princeton, used mathematical models in her senior thesis to analyze the fiction in The New Yorker. She read “442 stories printed in The New Yorker from Oct. 5, 1992, to Sept. 17, 2001, and built a substantial database. She then constructed a series of rococo mathematical tests to discern, among other things, whether certain fiction editors at the magazine had a specific impact on the type of fiction that was published, the sex of authors and the race of characters. The study was long on statistics and short on epiphanies: one main conclusion was that male editors generally publish male authors who write about male characters who are supported by female characters.” Full story here(requires registration).

I thought this was very interesting, considering my recent rant about how unhappy I am with my subscription to The New Yorker. I don't know how to do statistical analysis but I've noticed the different writing styles in the investment & markets section of the Wall Street Journal between women and men and the stories they are assigned. The males writers are much more idiomatic, particularly in the opening paragraphs, using idioms from gambling, agriculture, sports, horse racing and betting, war, and violence, and the women write much more straight forward, factual pieces. I have no idea why, except I would assume women don't use those idioms in normal, everyday speech, and therefore their writing style is less interesting to men, who are probably the editors assigning the tasks, and the majority of the readers. The idioms give the male style a more gossipy, tipster tone; the female style is sort of dull and school-marmish.

Male writer
“making with big bets”
“ramping up”
“capture a bigger share”
“grease the palms”
“stream of abuses”
“money on the table”
“raising their game”
“blowout data”
“exit velocity”
“road show meeting”
“bidding war”
“bit the bullet”
“took the reins”
“pushing costs down, not a slope, but over a cliff”
Stocks and markets, of course, rebound, boost, rally, plunge, surge, retreat, advance and weaken

Female writer
straight forward, non-idiomatic language
Uses idioms in quotes, usually from men

Male and Female co-authors
some idioms, but non-typical
“dipped into the talent pool”

I'm sure someone has written a senior thesis on this topic, analyzing a huge amount of data and comes to the same conclusion I have.