Can You Guess Someone’s Appearance From Their Writing?

I’m interested to know whether it’s possible to tell someone’s gender purely from gauging the style of their writing – and even further, whether you can guess someone’s appearance in that way as well. Not everyone shares their photo online. Sometimes when I read people’s blogs or social media, I have a strong desire to know what they look like. This is not because I want to judge people from their faces. I’m simply very curious. When I can’t see someone’s photo, it makes me wonder about them even more.

I think that it’s a lot easier to tell someone’s age than it is to tell their appearance. Younger people tend to use simpler vocabulary, and it is also more common for them to state their opinions as if they are facts. Of course, they use more slang and emojis as well (like XD – Sound like someone you know?)

When gender comes into it, it can be a little harder to tell. Again, when I try to guess it isn’t because I necessarily think it affects my reading. It is just because my mind is annoyingly curious. There are many books, and some blogs I’ve read where I’ve been surprised when I found out the gender of the author. But is there really a difference between “male” and “female” writing? I’ve heard that there are certain keywords that are specific to each gender, but I’m not sure how much of the time that’s accurate. There’s actually a website you can go to where you paste in a sample of your writing and it claims to be able to tell.

So, if we’re not sure whether keywords are an accurate indicator, what about speech patterns, sentence structures and content? Let’s take a look at content first: If someone mentions something like getting their period or breastfeeding, then I think you can tell whether pretty quickly whether they’re male or female. But it’s kind of cheating to be using content when we take this into blogging context; blogs are mostly autobiographical, meaning that people tend to say their gender anyway. So we’ll get back to speech patterns and sentence structures. A lot of the time I think of “male speech patterns” as being more focused and to-the-point, whereas in my mind female writing has more detail. I don’t know whether this is just me being sexist and stupidly stereotyping people, or whether I actually have a bit of a point. Probably a mixture of the two.

Sentence structure… hmm… well, that sort of ties in with speech patterns. Again, I find myself subconsciously assuming the writer is male when their speech patterns are more “straightforward.”

I just want to quickly take another look at what the content of your writing says about your gender. I do feel like on the whole male writers talk about their emotions less than female writers (not all of them though). Sometimes it sounds like they’re scared to share their emotions! Haha. But I think this is more the case of modern writers. Not really “olden day” ones, for some reason. Oh gosh, I feel really bad because I think I might have offended male readers? I didn’t mean to; it was an observation, not a judgement.

(By the way, on the internet I’ve noticed that most of the time females use emojis and exclamation marks more than males.)

Now let’s talk about people’s physical appearance. I’m pretty sure the main indicator here is the content – I mean, it’s HIGHLY unlikely that brunettes have certain keywords vs blondes; that would be utterly hilarious. Let’s assume that people don’t just say what they look like. If they did, we wouldn’t be here theorizing about it. Well, I reckon if you give a hint at where your parents are from, or the country you live in, people have a higher chance of guessing your race correctly. From there, they can narrow down your potential hair and eye colour, and start to get an idea of your facial features.

If, in the past you’ve mentioned, let’s say, plaiting your hair, a) that means that your hair isn’t short and b) it could suggest that your sense of style is more classical. Likewise, if you’ve hinted at a mohawk or dyed hair, it might be more probable that you have piercings. It could also give clues to the style of clothing you like to wear. The kind of music you listen to could also be an indicator, as could your religion. If people roughly know your age they can narrow down the possibilities that way too. These are the kind of hints one could look for when guessing the appearance of a blogger.

Now, the reason I’m writing this post is because I have a question for you. Yep, you’ve guessed it. Here’s the question: What do you imagine me to look like, based on my writing? Although I do have a profile photo, which looks like this:

it doesn’t say much about my current appearance, a) because it’s out of date, b) because it only shows half my face, c) the exposure of the camera is weird and d) it’s a pretty crap photo anyway. So, I’m curious to know how you imagine me to look based on what you’ve read of my blog. (Also, if you didn’t know the answer, would you say I was male or female?) I just think it would be interesting to know! It’s not because I look unusual or anything. And it’s not because I want you to say I look attractive but you can if you want. It would be especially interesting if you could tell me 1. How you would imagine me to look if you didn’t see my profile photo and 2. How you imagine my current appearance after seeing it. Because the photo does narrow down the options of how I might look. If you rake through all my posts (great way to improve Thisizapen’s stats) you’ll find a few hints around as well, but somehow… You probably have other priorities…

Wow, I feel really vain and egotistical now.

So, answers, thoughts and abuse in the comments section please!

If you’re as egocentric as I am, it might also be interesting for you to ask your followers how they imagine you to look, and read all their answers >.<