The Portrait of a Lady

words removed
118,137
marks left
28,030
words a sentence
15.8
most used mark
,

Its punctuation fingerprint: each mark's share, on the same scale as every book on the shelf.

Its punctuation twin, the closest fingerprint on the shelf: Beasts and Super-Beasts, Saki. More twins

Henry James on the shelf

3 books by Henry James are on the shelf. Its fingerprint is the 3rd closest of the 3 to their average. Held out and guessed from its marks alone, the shelf takes it for Edith Wharton. Of the 623 other authors on the shelf, Henry James's punctuation is closest to Marah Ellis Ryan's.

Henry James's average fingerprint

Henry James on the numbers page

Marks per 1,000 words, except words per sentence and dialogue (the share of words inside quotation marks).
This bookHenry James's averageEvery book's median
Semicolons12.58.77.2
Commas59.174.276.6
Colons1.21.91.6
Exclamation marks2.76.32.8
Question marks5.89.13.7
Words per sentence15.815.017.0
Dialogue39%31%22%

Every mark in reading order, left to right, top to bottom. Sentence endings are pink.

Read your own or go back to the shelf

Share it on Hacker News, Reddit, Bluesky, Threads, LinkedIn, X, or .