Authorship attribution

Authorship attribution is the process of identifying who created or contributed to a work by examining evidence such as style, records, and testimony.

Stylometry: The quantitative study of writing style using measurable features such as word frequencies and sentence lengths. It turns recurring features of a text into evidence for comparing candidate authors.
Authorship: The state or role of being responsible for creating or contributing to a work. Attribution seeks to identify the person or people who hold this role.
Federalist Papers authorship question: The question of which essays in The Federalist were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, or John Jay. Statistical analysis helped assign twelve disputed essays to Madison.
Plagiarism detection: The identification of unattributed copying or close borrowing in a work. It detects reuse of existing material, not necessarily who created the whole work.
Literary canon: The body of works regarded as especially significant within a literary tradition. Changing an attribution can alter which works and voices enter the canon.
Function words: Grammatical words such as articles and prepositions that express relationships rather than concrete meanings. Their frequent, often unconscious use can distinguish writing habits across texts.
Textual criticism: The study of a text's transmission and versions to establish or interpret its wording. A reliable text is needed before its language can be compared across works.
Shakespeare authorship question: Debate over whether William Shakespeare wrote the works traditionally attributed to him. The debate tests how documentary records and stylistic evidence bear on a famous literary attribution.
Source criticism: The analysis of a document's origins, sources, and historical reliability. It investigates where a work's information came from, which differs from identifying its author.
Copyright: Legal protection for original works of authorship, including rights to reproduce and distribute them. Identifying contributors can determine ownership and the exercise of legal rights.

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