My Writing Style and Mannerisms

I saw Mike Sass write about his writing mannerisms on his blog Shellsharks, so I figured I’d do something similar. These notes apply to my writings on Vale.Rocks more than anywhere else. When writing external to this site, my words must often be editorialised, altered for the sake of adhering to style guidelines, or tailored to a specific audience.

• I tend to write with jargon and specialised technical vocabulary. I think rather highly of people who read my work and assume they’re capable of operating a search engine or dictionary.

• I use Australian English. You can expect extra ‘u’s, a lack of ‘z’s, words like ‘doona’, and spellings such as ‘gaol’.

• I’m fairly aggressive with breaking up prose into paragraphs. This is equal parts my preferred writing style and wish to cater to the weaknesses of the web by providing visual checkpoints. Due to the latter reason I also use text styles whenever viable.

• I tend to write semi-formally but am not beyond jokes, references, and the occasional colloquialism. I write in the equivalent of a smart casual dress code.

• When first learning the ins and outs of writing in primary school, I latched onto complex sentences and have yet to let go.

• I am an Oxford comma evangelist. It helps with readability, and I like them. I will fight you on this.

• I love en dashes. I don’t use many em dashes, though. I’m not American, nor a LLM.

• I use commas to achieve a speaking cadence as well as for defining structure.

• When including links, I will use them inline. I also use a lot of links, as it tends to be how I refer to referenced content and additional reading. I do try to avoid links being required for understanding my content and instead have them serve as supplementary information.

• I love a good semicolon and will find excuses to use them.

• Always addicted to alliteration, I ardently apply it at any availability.

• I am prone to using ‘though’ as a crutch for bad writing.

• I occasionally use italics for emphasis of key terms or concepts, but I mainly use them for conversational emphasis.

• I tend not to use underlines or bold too frequently. Underlines on the web are largely associated with hyperlinks, and even though Vale.Rocks’ hyperlinks are styled differently, I still err on the side of caution. I bold things occasionally, but I do often find it draws the eye too much and can be distracting, so I do it scarcely.

• I incorporate parenthetical remarks and occasionally endnotes.

• As a general rule I don’t use emojis. I find them distracting in text and generally find I can convey most concepts better with written words.

• I use headings for differentiating sections. Heading level 1 is taken by titles, and I try to only use headings level 2 and 3 in writing. Going beyond that feels too granular and usually indicates a problem in prose structure.

• When I am writing micros, on social media, or in chats, I employ more colloquialisms and g-drops. I love a good g-drop when writin’.