That's not a line. That's a line

DAVID DALE

What makes a movie quote memorable? David Dale studies some scary research.

Let's start with a few film quotes. If you've done really badly at the quiz, there may not be much point in continuing to read this column, which is about new research from Cornell University on what makes a movie line memorable.

The boffins at Cornell's Department of Computer Science have researched the criteria for memorability revealed in a project they plan to present to a conference on computational linguistics in South Korea in July.

The research team, led by the wonderfully named Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil set itself the task of discovering what type of sentence is most likely to be ''retained in the public consciousness'' or ''take hold on people's minds''.

They used the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to build a list of what are generally agreed to be ''memorable quotes'' from films.

To separate the message from its dramatic context, they paired each classic line with a sentence of similar length spoken by the same character in a similar context, and used their supercomputer to isolate unique characteristics of the memorable quotes. Here's how a great movie line compares with the type of sentence you or I might use in everyday conversation:

- It makes sense to someone who knows nothing of the context (has not seen the movie).

- It uses standard grammar but contains unusual words or word combinations.

- It is more likely to use the indefinite article (a) than the definite (the).

- It is more likely to contain a second-person pronoun (you) than a first-person (I, we) or a third-person (he, she, they).

- It is more likely to be in the present tense than the past tense.

- It contains more front vowel sounds (ee or eh) than back sounds (u or o). Front vowels are said to sound more lively and cheerful.

Authors say this research has implications for the creation of political propaganda and advertising messages. New Scientist says: ''It means computers might one day help writers test their latest catchy lines.''

I find both notions disturbing. Movies are formularised enough without computers filtering screenplays for definite articles, past tenses, personal pronouns and back vowels. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

- Sydney Morning Herald

What's your favourite film quote?