Comparing craigslist W4M ads & M4W ads

On October 15, 2008 (just before the 3rd presidential debate) I scraped the first page of M4W ads and W4M ads from seattle.craigslist.com. I then fed the text from each into Wordle to generate word maps that resemble tag clouds. These visual text poems are based on word frequency.

From a quick glance, can you tell which image comes from the W4M ads and which comes from the M4W?

First let's compare the readibility indices for both types of ads. I used this text analysis engine online. The results? Overal the W4M ads were "dumber" than the M4W ads. Is this because women are writing down to men or are men more literate? You decide.

W4M readability
  Coleman Liau index: 5.58, Flesh Kincaid Grade level: 5.76, ARI (Automated Readability Index: 4.08, SMOG: 8.4

M4W readability
  Coleman Liau index: 5.98, Flesh Kincaid Grade level: 6.07, ARI (Automated Readability Index): 4.50, SMOG: 8.55