what are your text quirks

Thinking, as I sometimes do, about how easily I can emulate “business voice” for writing press releases and such. Less of a text quirk I guess, but I write these pieces for business and feel like I’m just doing an imitation of other stuff I’ve read, a lot of the time.

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Who has any idea what your voice sounds like when you’re not yelling

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since i’m not a native english speaker and only studied grammar through a book i went over in a couple days in one year, every specific thing related to the word order in a sentence, verb conjugations and spelling, the correct ponctuations – i literally just do it by feeling.

feel like i abuse quotation marks and parenthesis (and parenthesis within parenthesis) way too much though, which might be an influence of reading those old abdn reviews as a teen.

also i learned from ernest hemingway and gabriel garcia márquez that short sentences are cool but i always fail to write them in informal settings. honestly it’s so frustating!

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yeah from my japanese study so far (well mostly just kanji) i’m really getting the vibe that feeling is the most important part of adopting a language. that and that thing where people say new languages are much easier when you’re drunk

fwiw i don’t peg you as ESL, though now i’m scrutinizing i will say that the plural of ‘parenthesis’ is ‘parentheses’

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because i type at basically the same speed that i can think (slowly) my casual/draft writing tends to include heaps of uhhhhs and loads of commas that just kinda get scattered around in little triplets and doublets while i’m trying to work out what the next word is supposed to be. idk where the commas thing came from, i just found myself doing it and prefer how it feels compared to ellipses. stupid forum interpreter won’t let me show it here tho, bastard.

i like to have an even balance of “u” and “you” in my sentences. something about it feels important idk.

i like writing “lole” instead of “lol” sometimes, to communicate a particular pronunciation distinct from the usual.

oh and i write “guna” instead of “gonna” cos an ex of mine used to write it like that. i think it looks kinda stupid tbh. it looks like it’s pronounced “goona” but i can’t bring myself to write “gunna” fsr. i enjoy “jus” and “an” (instead of “and”) and shit like that too.

also until i read this thread i had no idea there was such a thing as an em-dash or an en-dash i just thought it was like yeah when u put two hyphens together it becomes one long dash for parentheticals and asides.

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Maybe they’re cool but I much prefer long sentences in things that I read. I think this is partially because long sentences (seem to) represent my internal monologue better and (I assume) other people’s as well. Generally speaking I’m more interested in who people actually are rather than what they think is a good way of representing themselves.

In other words, I think stream of consciousness at least has the appearance of more honesty and therefore it appeals to me more. Short sentences are great for communicating important information or keeping people’s attention, but that’s not what I’m here for.

That’s fairly obvious from my writing style though lol

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Basically like totally like really that kind of like really cool way of writing. Idk

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you may have encountered this before, but there is a word for this in japanese, which is “nomunication,” a pormanteau of “nomu” (to drink) and “communication.” it is real and it is great.

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yeah pretty much same. the reason i end up writing like this, with a bunch of information, breaks and detours per sentence is that this is 100% how my brain works, too.

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oh this only happens on mobile: accidentally turning on autocorrect and switching the keyboard language and not noticing

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contracting et cetera as &c.

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my best friend in year 12 did this. i think it’s wanky but also cool

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