My writing style has changed in the past 10 years - and I’ve data to prove it.

I am not the same writer as I was 10 years ago and I have numbers and life experiences to back it up.

So, what prompted this naval gazing?

I was testing the limits of a computer use agent I built for sitenote.ai. I gave it a tricky task: create a new github.io website and port over all of my posts from LinkedIn. It had to do everything in the browser: no APIs, no MCPs, no novel skills.

The agent got the job done in ~20 mins. I have written 19 Linkedin articles over the past 11 years - it cloned all of them to a cool looking site.

While admiring my new blog, I noticed content that I haven’t revisited in years. That got me thinking: has my writing style evolved?

2 years ago, I would have shrugged, picked up my cellphone and started doomscrolling. But, as we all know, things are different now. So I asked the agent to analyze my articles and highlight trends and interesting tidbits.

Here’s what it found along with some commentary:

My writing style is more warm and relatable than it was 10 years ago

My early posts were tutorials. My latest content is opinion pieces. I guess that’s part of growing old. When you're a newbie, you want to prove that you know stuff. When you're a seasoned professional, you are more confident in your skills and shift your focus from how things are done to what is the right way to do things.

The average school grade required to understand my posts has lowered - and that’s a good thing.

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level estimates how approachable your content is. For example, a score of 6 means that readers who are educated till the 6th grade can understand what you’re saying. To increase your reach, you should try to hit a score of 8.

My scores have fluctuated over the years but there’s a clear downward trend. And I know why:

1. I exclusively read the classics until my mid-twenties. I admired Charles Dickens and Mark Twain and tried to imitate them. That was a bad idea - that writing style was so 1888.
2. I have read 3 books on writing in the past 10 years. All of them had the same advice: shorter sentences, smaller words, punchier verbs. I guess I learnt the lesson.

My average word length has shortened

I avoid fancy words. We have already discussed a couple of reasons for that earlier. One more reason might be the gapping duration between the present and my academic life. When you’re getting paid for your time, the last thing you want to do is read words that are hard to chew. People aren’t sitting around reading thought pieces all day. They’re taking a quick break for mental nourishment. They expect words that are easy to swallow on the go.

My sense of humour remained intact

The humour score is holding flat. I care about it the most. As a kid, I was always perplexed by adults taking themselves too seriously. Back then, the cause of the confusion was simple: why would you knowingly make yourself miserable by abandoning humour? Now, the reasons for my disgust towards taking yourself too seriously are darker, more existential. Curiosuly, there was a humour score spike in 2021 and I wonder if the existential factor had a role to play.

That's it. I'd be down to rerun this analysis 10 years from now if I'm still around. I wonder if the score updates will be more subtle.