  The reader of William's philosophical works is struck by their difference in character from the mainstream of philosophical and theological writing of the early thirteenth century. Whereas William's contemporaries tend to compose works as a series of linked questions, each treated according to the question method (a paradigm of which is Aquinas's later Summa theologiae), William instead follows the practice of Avicenna and Avicebron and composes treatises much more akin to a modern book. Indeed, William even models his writing style to some degree on the Latin translations of these authors. These features, together with William's frequent use of analogies, metaphors and examples drawn from everyday life, his long-winded, rambling prose and frequent digressions, his harsh assessments of opponents as imbeciles or morons, and his urging that proponents of dangerous doctrines be wiped out by fire and sword, make for an inimitable and immediately recognizable style.