What can you tell about someone based on how they type?

[№56]

How much can you determine about a stranger on the internet based on their typing style alone? Forget the actual semantic content of a post, I'm just talking about style here - grammar, punctuation, structure, word choice, formatting, etc. - the semi-conscious choices people make when choosing how to compose something they post online. It's an accepted fact that different people have different writing styles, but how much can you tell about that person just by looking at how they type? How much does that affect your mental image of them? How often do you find yourself doing this, if at all?

For instance, can you guess a stranger's age online if they don't mention it? Their gender? Can you tell if English is not their first language even if they don't make any spelling errors or grammatical mistakes? Can you tell when someone is being emotionally sincere, or when they're trying to disguise how they really feel? (i.e. someone who is actually seething mad but trying to look calm.) Can you reconstruct the sound of their voice? Can you recognize someone you've seen before posting on an anonymous site or from behind an alt account just by looking at how they type? Can you tell what other websites they frequent? (i.e. "r*ddit spacing") What's the limit to this kind of theorizing, and at what point does it turn into a paranoid delusion?

I'm interested in hearing what other people think about this. I've spent a lot of my time on the internet posting on anonymous and pseudo-anonymous sites where IDing people based on how they type is an accepted thing, but I'm not sure how widespread or reasonable the idea actually is. Speaking for myself, I think there are a number of things you can accurately determine about someone based on their typing style but I want to hear what the rest of you have to say first.

 

[Digital Cheese]

I don't think its possible to tell who someone actually is for sure by purely how they type bc u can just change ur writing style, but u can sometimes tell if theyre mad or not. If they're just saying really short obvious troll stuff, no. But if its a longer response, its far easier to tell because you cant fake like you're not mad for an extremely long amount of time unless you're very good at it, in which most people online are not.

 

[Some_porcupine]

there is one xxiivv forum about it (these identifiers; it talks about cybersecurity and possible stalking around the way one posts, and some style duplicates, copies of posts (by OP) on web, tracking, security; and linux anymizer...) but forgot name...

 

[Deleted member 7044]

The most you can gather from someone's written posts are things like:

• Dialect of English (or other language) they're writing in.
• Their vocabulary.
• Their writing style.

From that you might be able to guess things like age, general location (at least where they grew up), and sites they also use assuming you're aware of the slang of other sites.

 

[llillilll]

You can surely get quite a lot of information from how people write, especially when they are writing under a lot of emotions. I don't even read political or rant posts after the first paragraph if i don't know/care about the poster anymore, the writing style in the first paragraph usually creates a good enough image.
You can usually understand the sites they use from the writing style too if you know other sites lingo well enough.

 

[GENOSAD]

You can usually get their age bracket; I've gotten good at sniffing out people who are underage, but grown-up Autists throw me off a lot. They usually avoid capitalization and punctuation and get really liberal with use of acronyms.
People with English as a second language can be easy to spot too, since they usually insert or omit "a" and "the," and have scuffed pluralization.

 

[llillilll]

I've gotten good at sniffing out people who are underage, but grown-up Autists throw me off a lot.

Same, i thought vetus was 14-15 just to learn he is 30+ later on.

 

[Antice]

With a large enough sample size, some things, I guess:

Lucidity can drastically vary from one day to the next, and unless you have lots of samples to look at, you can't really know if the text you're reading is contaminated by their condition vs an actual coherent sample. That alone will give you bad readings, and mess with techniques you think should work. Success with this might just be a thing where you're fooling yourself into believing its a type of analysis, but you're actually doing a divination.

You can definitely tell how much effort one puts into their post and with a couple of leaps assume their state of mind, probably thought process. The one thing I can tell for sure is if they are smarter, equal or naive. Mostly unconsciously, with a result on the "empathy scale". Only to correct it with another, better to read post:

You can surely get quite a lot of information from how people write, especially when they are writing under a lot of emotions. I don't even read political or rant posts after the first paragraph if i don't know/care about the poster anymore, the writing style in the first paragraph usually creates a good enough image.
You can usually understand the sites they use from the writing style too if you know other sites lingo well enough.

Regarding emotion in formatting (Barely SFW): There is a POI and during certain blog entries/ topics you could tell how aroused he was. In any other case rule 39-40 applies.

Can you tell what other websites they frequent?

Well, that is indeed very interesting and the main point of my reply. How should I? Mostly it's the other way around: They post in a captivating way, I research a bit about references they make, maybe a catchphrase and boom. You'll end up in a niche environment everybody sniffs you out, because you don't talk their lingo.
Broadly, this also is a very good indicator for the quality of person at hand; How much do I have to know/research to even grasp what they are talking about. In general, you can tell.

Other people often find these things, piercing their perception of "privacy", to be rude. Do it too many times at the wrong platform and you get booted. Even when just trying to call out sock puppet accounts.

 

[15horses]

There was a time in high school when my language teacher said "Language is power, if you don't master it you are made a fool", I believe this fits very well today where people hyper abreviate basic expressions and arrive at higher education as functionally illiterate (People who, technically, are literate and know how to read and write, but who have a very low-level vocabulary and have serious problems with interpreting text and forming ideas on their own).
It's funny considering how easily influenced people are today.

 

[stonehead]

I mentioned posting in this thread about how ">reddit spacing" could give away that someone frequently posts on >reddit, even on other sites. If the question is "how much can I tell about a person based on their writing", the answer is not much. I don't often think about the real-world traits of people I exclusively communicate with online. If I ever have to, I usually subconsciously assume they're the same as me in terms of age, employment status, rough geography, etc. I feel like I could guess what website they used before coming to Agora pretty well though. 4chan users and tumblr users type very differently.

If the question is instead "How much could someone who's good at it tell about a person based on their writing" I suspect the answer might be quite a lot. Not with absolute certainty obviously, but I would guess forensic analysts could guess the classic A/S/L pretty consistently. Probably 80 or 90% of the time. I think subcultures and social status would be relatively easy too. I doubt many Harvard grads type like rural farmers, or many goths like quarterbacks.

 

[☯змія☯]

That they are not illiterate.

 

[mesaprotector]

I adjust my typing style to fit the website I'm on/person I'm talking to, and I think that's pretty damn common lmao, I'm happy to stand out but it should be based on the content of what I say not the format. I know y'all would give me shit if I typed the same way I do on Tumblr, and that's fine imo, it's just site culture. The biggest thing you can tell from typing style, most places, is whether someone's a new recruit or a veteran member.

It's not just typing, people "accommodate" with speech (ex. talking with a slight British accent when talking to a Brit, subconsciously or not), and even handwriting too.

 

[Tao]

People with extreme politics swear a lot, and vice versa.

 

[Caspar]

Digital physiognomy? Eh. It's so-so. Just like real physiognomy. It's gratifying to think that your powers of intuition are so strong that they can see through the wires of the Internet and deliver you an accurate scope of a person's being, but I think it's often just an exercise in conceit. It's better to approach people's posts with two things in mind: earnesty and awareness of how much time responding will cost you. Speaking to the actual point, the only thing I can really recognize independently of semantic content is maybe sites frequented, dubiously age or gender.

 

[Caspar]

People with extreme politics swear a lot, and vice versa.

I like to think my politics are rather extreme and yet I don't think I swear particularly much.

 

[GENOSAD]

I like to think my politics are rather extreme and yet I don't think I swear particularly much.

god damn, shut the fuck up

 

[Ross_Я]

People with English as a second language can be easy to spot too

Was I easy to spot? I need to know.

 

[GENOSAD]

Was I easy to spot? I need to know.

Your profile kinda scuffed the results; I assumed you were an American LARPing as a Russian

 

[Ross_Я]

I assumed you were an American LARPing as a Russian

Well, that's really not bad by my book. Maybe I should try to write something short on english one more time.

 

[☯змія☯]

I like to think my politics are rather extreme and yet I don't think I swear particularly much.

Never cook again