When I Write, Does That Tell You What Sex I Am?

Tonight I want to discuss something that I noticed that I did today without even realizing it. I was reading an article today and I assumed that the author of this article was female, without even looking at the author’s name or anything. Once I realized I did this, the first thought was why it even mattered, but the second and to me the more intriguing one was, Why did I decide the author was female?

This wasn’t an author I had read before, the author never came out and indicated gender in her article or even an occupation that is predominantly a male or female dominated career. Is there something in the way that males and females, as a whole, write that indicates our sex, what about sexual orientation or even what is our cultural background. I do know that scientists who study handwriting, a field called graphology, imply that they can determine a person’s sex based on the handwriting. But here we are talking about something that has been typed on a computer and even professionally edited. There have been a great many studies that observe the differences in how men and women communicate, but most of those have been in relation to verbal and non-verbal, what about the written form of communication. Is there a difference in the way that men and women write. This is an interesting question and one that I am not prepared to answer just yet. So I intend to research this some more, however if you have any comments, post away and I will try to respond to your ideas about this issue before I next speak on it.