Do you have a strange writing style? (Do I?)
Hmmm. There was another writer who wrote lots of "unnecessary" description and people gobble it up and love it and probably will forever! His name was John Steinbeck!
You probably suck at tweeting, I'm guessing. ; )
Thanks for the compliment. Also, yes, I'm -horrible- at texting and tweeting.
My degree is in German (with a second major and a minor on top of that), and I'd often use or want to use German expressions or just German things (like very very big sentences, haha). I actively fought it for the most part, but I of course didn't for my German papers.
Ha!
Those Germans: they do have a way with language, especially with compacting large ideas into a single word. Very logical and rigid--which was/is probably why I'm attracted to it.
I also just love a good umlaut... and whatever the hell that symbol that represents two 'S'es is called, I forget.
Sincere regards, sir. Looking forward to future posts of yours.
(As an aside, my degree is in English Literature, with separate minors in Philosophy and German Studies; originally studied Computer Science for several years...).
That is likely the reason I like it so much and continued studying it. I really like German because you can often say so much with so little, and the terms are generally very logical - a word will often not just be a word, but a description of itself.
It's called an 'esszett' (probably because it looks like an old fationed s and a z) or 'scharfes s' ('sharp s' for those who don't know German).
Likewise.
I started off studying biology. My second major is International Studies (European focus) and my minor is in History.
I use a lot of things like very long statements in parenthesis, sometimes even with parenthesis statements within those parenthesis statements. I also will use hyphens, or lines, much like someone will use commas or semicolons - I use them to separate clauses which could stand alone as sentences - I've even used this writing style in most of the papers I wrote when I was in university, and professors seemed to love it. I also use semicolons and other things that many people avoid; although, generally I use semicolons more in academic writing than I do in other forms of writing. They never remarked on the hyphens, but they always said my papers were very well written.
I also tend to be very descriptive and I think I probably am overly descriptive. Often I feel like I might be giving many unnecessary details, but I often can't figure out which parts of the things I'm writing are unnecessary - I feel like they're all necessary - that if I remove anything, it will remove some vital detail.
In the past, people have asked me to be more concise - to not write so much, and say everything in fewer words, etc.
I don't see a lot of people writing like I do, so I wonder, is my writing style strange?
Is your writing style strange? Do you think it is? Have others said anything about it?
Ummm....part of me wants to ask if you are making fun of me--but then I realize I am probably not even on your radar so it would be bizarre for you to spend any time making fun of me (you most likely have no idea who I am.)
But I do a lot of what you do. I try really hard not to do it because I have been ribbed about it before.
If you look around, you will notice that almost all of my posts are "too long." I often kill threads. I don't know if it is because of what I say or if it's just so long and convoluted that people give up and walk away. LOL!
I suck at tweeting and IMing, they always come off as more formal and more literate than those of my NT friends...
I think you could've used a semicolon in the second sentence:
"To me, it feels natural to use them; they help give meaning to the sentences."
I try not to pester people about their punctuation, etc. in forums, since it's informal and there are people of all ages, education levels, and languages here. Besides, I mess up a lot because I'm in a hurry to get the idea out before it gets too.... Dang. Umm.... Never mind. If I keep going, I'll be here for my whole lunch break and not eat.
English is not my native language, so I don't master it as well as my native one. However, I still think it's debatable whether there was a need to use a semicolon or a coma in that sentence. I think both of them are correct in regards to grammar. I sometimes use comas instead of semicolons, when I want the text to flow more naturally, as I feel that semicolons tend to suggest a more rigid division between the sentences. But I might be wrong, since this is the way it goes in my language and it might be different in English...
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Probably 75% Aspie, 25% NT... and 100% ADHD
Aspie-quiz results:
Aspie score: 138 of 200 / NT score: 78 of 200 => Very likely an Aspie.
Huh. I have been told mine is strange though and that not only I speak like a foreigner when talking in German but that I "cannot" write German and that my written German is "einfach falsch". My second to last English teacher once said that my written English is a nightmare especially because I use all my words wrongly.
Except for a few teachers such as an awesome English teacher, most teachers of the three schools I went to during my last years of schooling also didn't hold back when it came to telling me that my writing is hard to understand and that my written analyses rarely made sense to them. They said that my texts are full passages of incoherent gibberish. Oh, but my final conclusions were usually fine and as such, a biology teacher and a German teacher at one of the schools both suspected that I regularly copied them from someone else.
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Autism + ADHD
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett
Except for a few teachers such as an awesome English teacher, most teachers of the three schools I went to during my last years of schooling also didn't hold back when it came to telling me that my writing is hard to understand and that my written analyses rarely made sense to them. They said that my texts are full passages of incoherent gibberish. Oh, but my final conclusions were usually fine and as such, a biology teacher and a German teacher at one of the schools both suspected that I regularly copied them from someone else.
Your English looks great to me - were these English teachers native speakers of English?
But I do a lot of what you do. I try really hard not to do it because I have been ribbed about it before.
If you look around, you will notice that almost all of my posts are "too long." I often kill threads. I don't know if it is because of what I say or if it's just so long and convoluted that people give up and walk away. LOL!
It's nice to see another person who feels their writing is similar to mine. And you're on my radar - most people who post on WP are on my radar - I remember posts I've read from people in the past pretty much any time I read someone's post. Although, I generally stick to this section of the forum, so I might not know people's posts from other areas. I've liked reading your posts in the past.
I have a natural tendency to write long or even very long sentences, in my mother tongue (French). They look like Proust's longer sentences (but in some of my texts, I can dwarf them in length). This university year I wrote my mémoire (a long dissertation) - I wrote twice the number of pages required (I could have written much more, but that will be for my thesis) - and the professors noted my analytic process and the length of my sentences, which can be a bit too much sometimes. I have no problems to read long or very longs sentences (in prose and in essays, I don't really like short sentences), which is logic ; also, I think it reflects my way of thinking, although most of the time I don't really think when I write. It's like a background process on a computer : I let my brain do it, and I enjoy the results - I've had outstanding results on quite long papers done nearly overnight. It doesn't work all the time, of course ; when I have to really "think" writing becomes more difficult, and composing long sentences less natural and more tricky (surely because as I usually let my brain in "autopilot" mode, I've become kind of lazy, and it appears when for some reason, sometimes because of tiredness, my autopilot supply doesn't work).
Actually i can relate very much to what you've written... i am also a heavy user of dashes and semicolons. Very detail-oriented. Really, detail is very important....i find omission of detail to be quite puzzling, in fact. i also have a tendency to be longwinded, and................. here i go again, i have to add "AND" something else, (comma); something else. i can't just make a statement without making a mini-list. i also use a lot of qualifiers, like often, perhaps, maybe, slightly, etc. Oh, and "may" and "would" are my favorite words. It is hard for me to make a definitive statement There! Just did
BTW, your writing style doesn't seem unusual, per se, i can relate to it.
Everyone's writing has certain qualities that are influenced by personality. Most of us have detail orientation so use brackets, and lists and a slow metre. The difference can be seen between your style (I'm similar but not so good at punctuation) and http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt205142.html both of you are perfectly good detail orientated but at opposite sides of the class.
I use ";" a lot, and also "..." and also "-"... which is probably a bit odd to most people, but at least I spell properly, unlike mst ppl these dayz, im so sik of ppl ho rite lik this... unless you are dyslexic and genuinely can't spell I can't see any reason why you wouldn't use proper spellings and punctuation.
Got to agree hate the text speak. I'm dyslexic (thought i had a bad stomach for weeks (bad joke)) and do find spelling and punctuation hard (hated English at school) but the spell check helps a lot.
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