With the latest JU brouhaha about bloggers harassing and impersonating others, it got me to thinking: could someone successfully impersonate me, and would I be duped consistently by someone who was impersonating another of the bloggers I read faithfully?

Short answer: I don't think so.

You see, when I look at my work, I see a certain style. They are characteristics that are as much a signature as the one I sign at the bottom of my meal ticket at the restaurant. Simple sentences are a rarity in my world, except when brevity is used for emphasis. Parenthetical remarks characterize my blog in one part of the article or another more often than not. When I chatted, ellipses were my signature, here, they're not so important.

A look across the list of other bloggers would tell me the same thing. Word choices, punctuation choices, spelling errors and variations are all giveaways to the author. Would you, for instance, confuse Hemingway with Joe Schmoe if you read much of their works? Doubtful, as an intimate knowledge of the writing of even one of these men would quickly betray the inconsistencies in another's substantially similar work. Just as a visual artist is known by his brush strokes, so we are known by our words, our sentence structure, our punctuation and grammar, and a variety of other variables, including the life experience that weaves itself into the tapestry. We all have "soapbox" subjects that will betray us just as readily as all above.

So I wouldn't worry about blog impersonators. They'll out themselves eventually (and I was so self conscious about my own parenthetical statement comment that I almost left this out...lol).