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 literate and 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 use metric for all units unless context necessitates imperial.

• 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 like to think 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 an LLM.

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

• I strongly believe the contents of quotes shouldn’t generally be messed with. This includes using logical punctuation to avoid altering content within quotation marks with my own punctuation. I do permit myself the use of stylings and further details like metric conversions within quotes, though they should not be displayed inline with text, and I make it obvious that they are additive.

  • Long quotations are displayed in blockquotes and without quotation marks.

• Dates are written in shorthand as YYYY-MM-DD, or DD-MM-YYYY if required, though I generally opt for written dates.

• 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 don’t put quotations around the titles of works.

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

• Always addicted to alliteration, I ardently apply it at any and all availabilities.

• 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.

• Personal titles (Mr, Ms, etc) are generally omitted. They are superfluous in most cases.

• Acronyms and initialisms are written without full stops (“AI”, not “A.I.”). I dislike using full stops within sentences and feel they should be reserved for indicating the end of a sentence. This also applies to eg, ie, and etc.

• I have a tendency to define terms and then use them as if they are common terms of art.

• 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 footnotes/endnotes/sidenotes. These are a way to provide further information without disrupting text and a way to branch off from otherwise linear writing.

• Post and header titles are styled in title case, or as written in the source when referencing.

• Use modern punctuation. “?!” becomes an interrobang: “‽”.

• Items in lists follow sentence case, and

• Admonitions are used for important material which it is imperative the reader must be privy to. The possible types are note, tip, important, warning, or caution.

• I use a single space after full stops.

• 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.

• The contents of codeblocks are kept as simple as possible.

• 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’.