Topic

distinctive forum writing styles

It's funny. Often, when I'm reading a thread, and scroll down, and see just the first few sentences (but not the "posted by"), of a reply, I can immediately tell who it's written by.

For example - I can nearly always tell when it's striatic. He often uses short sentences, and puts spaces between them (ETA: he also tends not to use capital letters):

kinda like this.

or this, sometimes.

or maybe like this

:)

Or emdot. She uses smileys a lot. I mean that in the best of ways. I use smileys CONSTANTLY :D

There are a couple others that I can't really pinpoint the reasons for, like Laurali or Hburger. (ETA: I realized what it is with Laurali: she tends to leave off periods on the ends of paragraphs.)

Anyway, it's interesting. And kind of freaky. Anyone else notice this? :)

Posted 16 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • btw i also tend not to use capital letters and i tend to use asterisks for *emphasis* and my sentences go on for a lot longer than they should and I use square brackets and a space in my smileys : ]

    among other grammatical and punctuational idiosyncrasies.

    btw excellent analysis, cupcakehead.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yes it is very interesting! 
    Posted 16 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ha, stri, I've noticed those too, just didn't think of them when I was writing it :)
    Posted 16 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have noticed that I tend to write things in large blocky paragraphs because I was taught that paragraphs are huge. I too think it is really neat with how people write and I can also recognize stri's post and his distinctive wit.
    Posted 16 months ago by Ani Laurel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sprinkles (that name makes me laugh so much, sorry!), I know exactly what you mean! Nanookie, katlazam and rascalmom also share a similar feel to their replies, but again, it's hard to pinpoint it - well, they're always lighthearted and... correct. :)
    Posted 16 months ago by Hburger Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ha, thanks shrimpy! I have, at least once, started reading a comment that was very well-written and so right, and after the third big paragraph when it just kept on going, I thought hmmm, scrolled down... and yep, that's zeeberk alright! :)
    Posted 16 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not just on the individual-to-individual level but even what fields they've studied.

    There is a certain kind of vocab that immediately IDs one as a reader of mass media. "Salvo" is like that; you either see it from review writers or military personnel, and one is far more likely to write it than the other. This is also true for "latest/most recent/newest effort", and triply true if they call it an "offering." The double dash -- this thing -- that's something used by a lot of sociology/journalism majors and people who read a lot of nonfiction. Or Anthony Bourdain. Or Harvard Crimson writers.

    Whenever someone uses the words "space" to refer to an area of discussion, I almost always know they lean feminist or have friends who have taken some sort of gender studies course. "Dominant discourse" probably means they lean left and/or are into some kind of humanistic literary criticism. By contrast, "moonbats", "loony", and "[noun] on parade" are favorites of right-wingers. This is doubly true if they will end their paragraph with a more formal, modernistic "Ha." sentence instead of the impressionistic/stylized "HA!" that a younger person would use.

    When a person says "less" instead of "minus", I always know they've taken more than the usual amount of economics courses -- or at least devoted more attention to them than other subjects. People who use hyphens to coin new words, like "dork-specific" to refer to writing specific to dorks, have probably read a lot of psychological articles. Questionably substituting "equate" with "conflate" is something you usually only see in political writing. And programmers, without fail, are going to insert their verdict at the very beginning of what they're talking about: "Exactly. The democratsdghfghdshjklsjhkls..." or, "No. It's actuallydffjkljkss....."

    I find this sort of thing fascinating. And now that I've used "sort of thing" (instead of "kind of thing") you can confirm your intuition that I am someone who has read far too many British editorials.
    Posted 16 months ago by The Crepeist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • what does a proclivity for using the phrases "plotz", "wackadoodle", "web thingummy" and "THE VEAL OF TREES" say about me?
    Posted 16 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Holy crap on a stick @The Crepeist!  
    Are you a profiler for the FBI?   :-) 
    Posted 16 months ago by Stormy Weather Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think he's just prof. Henry Higgins in disguise.
    Posted 16 months ago by Cefeida Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I guess we'll have to wait and see until Bureaucratic Arts III is available. ;)
    Posted 16 months ago by The Crepeist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Actually, that was a typo on my part.  Substitute the words "about me" with "about someone else not me".
    Posted 16 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I <3 em dashes, and approximations thereof. :P
    Posted 16 months ago by Lelu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @nanookie - "plotz" tags you as either a jew or a jewannabe.
    Posted 16 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Aw! Cupcake!! :)

    For the record, I actually do smile when I put down the smileys. :)
    Posted 16 months ago by emdot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Lelu -- my love for the em-dash is how I got my nick. :) and i used to sign all my emails "m." so my friends started calling me emdot.
    Posted 16 months ago by emdot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hmm. Now I'm curious what anyone has noticed about my style. I notice one of the devs commented on it positively in the Live Help channel. I suspect I tend to the formal.

    @Crepeist - And what do you think my background is?
    Posted 16 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Fokian

    I don't have enough of your writing to say. I'd guess you're a techie with a penchant for fantasy fiction, but that's based on hard facts from your profile, not your writing. :P
    Posted 16 months ago by The Crepeist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • No profile reading, or googling, that's cheating. :P What about me?  If you can, that is, I really haven't posted much lately.
    Posted 16 months ago by Cefeida Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not too bad, actually. I don't recall any direct interaction with you. But just do a forum search under my nickname. I'm a pretty prolific contributor here. 
    Posted 16 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Everything I read by Fokian seemed to back up my guess, lol.

    @Cefeida the only thing I could gather from your writing style (word choice, idiosyncrasies) was that you might lean left and you might be female.
    Posted 16 months ago by The Crepeist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was kind of interested in what political leanings and such I reflect :) 
    Posted 16 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lean left?

    *checks balance* 

    No, okay, I know what you mean, I just don't subscribe to the idea of left and right anymore. From what I have seen, it really, really doesn't work that way. Neither the supposed left nor the supposed right have ever done me any good, for all their claims and shouting. :(

    Funny that my word choices suggest that I'm female. Now I'm feeling slightly self-conscious, and also wondering what you base your analysis on. 
    Posted 16 months ago by Cefeida Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's probably an artifact of your polyglot background :) If English is not your native language some quirks might show through. 
    Posted 16 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • IDIOLECTS ON DISPLAY AND POSTERS COGNIZANT OF SUCH.

    FASCINATING!

    My heart's a-flutter.
    Posted 16 months ago by Linar Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, this is nothing. You should have seen my English fifteen years ago. I'm surprised I wasn't banned from the internet for adverb molestation and thesaurus abuse.

    (I suspect being a teenager might have had something to do with it as well.)
    Posted 16 months ago by Cefeida Subscriber! | Permalink
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiolect 
    Been a while since I studied up  on that issue in NLP (natural language processing). *shudder*
    Posted 16 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lord Bacon-o always stands out to me - I can usually spot him by the end of the first sentence. striatic is too easy - his idiosyncrasies stand out a mile. zeeberk's long, considered postings are easy to spot too. Nanookie can be rather distinctive too, but she's often too brief to spot definitively before you see the attribution line.
    Posted 16 months ago by dopiaza Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I CAN ALWAYS TELL IF IT'S CERULEAN, NOT SURE WHAT THE GIVEAWAY IS, SOMETHING  AS LIGHT AND EFFERVESCENT AS A TINY BUBBLE  LMAO LMAO LMAO

    :D
    Posted 16 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Nanookie, you're killing me lately.

    napabeth and Ghost777 are also easy to spot.

    I am an accent freak (in that I love them) and similarly read people's prose for their "accent."

    (I can be easily spotted by my overuse of parentheticals.)
    Posted 16 months ago by jasbo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This is a *fascinating* thread. :D
    Posted 16 months ago by Arii Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Crepeist  certainly has my attention....Please do continue....You have sparked my curiosity and entertained my imagination.
    Posted 16 months ago by Tilly TrinkleHouse Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I heart this thread already, but methinks we may have to wait in line behind a Peanuts-esque "Psychiatric Help 5c" sign in order to receive more input from our dear Crepeist. *awaits further analysis*
    Posted 16 months ago by Jennyanydots Subscriber! | Permalink
  • There's absofreakinlutely NUTHIN in how and/or what I write that would clearly identify me as the author.

    To be clear, I am referring to the use or absence of capitalization, use of ellipses -- or any other types of punctuation -- any cadence or word usage or patterns of usage that would be indicative of my background, gender, interests, education (or lack thereof), current or past career paths.  I will go so far as to state that if presented with an excerpt of something I wrote, absent of any context, reference or tags, there would be no indisputable proof that I was the author of said excerpt.

    :D :P
    Posted 16 months ago by g33kgurrl Subscriber! | Permalink
  • g33....

    To you, I say, "HA."

    (And then flag myself as a perpetrator of parentheses.)
    Posted 16 months ago by jasbo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Pssssh, You can't tell when it's me typing. Of this I'm sure ;)  I left me behind a few days ago.
    Posted 16 months ago by Innie✿, Obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • jas -- seriously -- me and my feetie pajamas are coming for you.  :D
    Posted 16 months ago by g33kgurrl Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Can anyone tell when it's me? I doubt it :D
    Posted 16 months ago by Cupcake Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @g33k - ye hoebag.
    Posted 16 months ago by jasbo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oooh, now I want to know what Crepeist thinks of me, especially as I recently addressed s/he in another forum so now s/he has examples of my writing to judge by!  
    Posted 16 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Cupcake:  I can't tell when its you.  A lot of times I can't tell when its a certain person because at first I thought I could and then was often wrong so I stopped trying.

    But I *do* go back after I know who the author is (for the more outspoken folks) and then reread it and have a different interpretation of what is being said
    Posted 16 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • After over 30 years of living in Italy I'm reasonably sure my English has become a kind of 'hybrid'; Italian is unfortunately my first language now. Teaching English to children doesn't do much for one's vocabulary :)
    Posted 16 months ago by Zira Subscriber! | Permalink
  • sorta kinda cupcake
    Posted 16 months ago by Djoe6897 Subscriber! | Permalink