Individuality was the magic wand to claim civil liberties in last century but its lustre gleams no less in this century. Today individuality is cited as ‘reason’ to do almost anything. From drug abuse to self-abuse to masochism. Freedom to choose and act as individual is claimed. Question is where and who is this individual? Here an attempt is to find out individual writing style. Be it a blog, story or non-fictional anthology, we do see a pattern which often signify individuality. But how far is this pattern real?
Vocabulary is the artillery by which a writer wages war of words on the world. The choice of words for different situations is different among similar people. Human mind is like a mirror and it reflects everything around us. Vocabulary and grammar style is often dictated by people we have for our company. Change the company and our vocabulary and speech style changes.
Try the company of jerks, hooligans, bootleggers, muggers etc. and expletives would start flowing like water flows in amazon river.
Another way of looking at the writing style is through the reading habits. A person engrossed in literature is more likely to quote from Shakespeare etc. But a person with greater sense of humour and literary bent, is more likely to quote Mark Twain. Romantic will quote Keats or Shelley for company.
A Doctor by profession is more likely to use words like ‘etymology’ and ‘prognosis’ than anything else for cause and effect.
On the contrary a lawyer may be more obsessed with words like ‘injustice’ and ‘jurisdiction’.
Similarly a politician or politically aspiring person is more likely to use ‘Mis-governance’ and ‘reforms’ than anything else.
Similar are the effect of country, nationality and other things on the writing of an individual.
Most of the time mind acts like a recycle bin of our readings. What we read is absorbed and recycled in writing.
The point is that very little or nothing is left to be called individuality or individual writing style. In actuality writing is a collective effect of environment of a person. If that be so, where is an individual?

© Sandeep Bhalla