It's been used to question or confirm the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, Homer's Illiad and Odyssey and St Paul's letters for hundreds of years.

Now the science of stylometry could be used in the fight against hackers, trolls and malware writers that wreak havoc on the web.

The write stuff: Drexel University stylometry researchers Mike Brennan, Ariel Stolerman, Andrew McDonald, Aylin Caliskan Islam, Sadia Afroz and Rachel Greenstadt.

At the same time, stylometry - the analysis of a person's unique writing style – could also be used by employers to identify whistleblowers or whingers among their staff.

"Your writing style can give you away and on the internet anonymity is difficult to achieve," say the US researchers who have developed online tools to analyse writing.