Mysterious distinctiveness

[vvvexation]

It kind of baffles me sometimes how often I can identify the author of an LJ post before I scroll up to see the username.

I mean, sometimes it's pretty obvious from the subject matter, and occasionally it's obvious from the writing style. But sometimes I scroll back down and reread the post and still can't for the life of me figure out how I knew who wrote it. Especially when it's someone I don't even know in real life.

Does this happen to you? Are you as puzzled by it as I am?

Comments

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I can sometimes identify which of my coworkers wrote a particular Help topic without checking in the document management system for the author. This is especially weird to me, because our corporate style guide is supposed to smooth out our individual quirks so that we write with a single corporate voice. We still manage to be surprisingly distinctive.

[adamchristopher.livejournal.com]

i almost always know immediately, but it's probably way less interesting that i do, because i have just a few friends. also, i use colors for most everybody. :p so i can tell by the color. ;) but some people have the same color, and i can still tell. though that's not super impressive, because it still narrows it down a lot.

[pielology.livejournal.com]

I just assume I subconsciously registered the user icon without really noticing it.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Not true in my case; I read bottom-up, and I'm talking specifically about the cases where I recognize the writing style before the icon's even visible.