What Is My Writing Style Quiz
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- The exact sounds, colors, textures, movements, and smells that make it distinct
- A few carefully chosen details that establish the market’s atmosphere
- The sequence of events that takes a visitor from arrival to departure
- The market’s layout, opening times, and role in the neighborhood
- A short story centered on someone discovering the hobby
- An opinion column about why more people should try it
- A comparison of different ways to get started
- A step-by-step beginner’s guide with terms and examples explained
- Define the topic, set its boundaries, and preview how the explanation will unfold
- Begin with a concrete example, then unpack the ideas behind it
- Lead with a debatable claim that invites the reader to take a side
- Drop the reader into a scene where the topic affects someone personally
What Is My Writing Style Quiz - Description and methodology of the test
Readers who want to understand the kinds of writing they reach for can use the What Is My Writing Style Quiz to examine recurring preferences across four writing affinities. It is intended for people who want language for recurring writing preferences rather than a label. The result offers a writing style assessment and helps connect choices with deliberate decisions. It can show whether one affinity leads or several work together.
What This Assessment Explores
Situations cover description, explanation, storytelling, revision, argument, and audience awareness. Four plausible approaches invite the reader to choose what feels most natural, not to prove technical skill. As a writing style quiz, it converts these preferences into a profile for reflection and planning.
These dimensions describe affinities for:
- Descriptive Writer (0-12) reflects imagery, atmosphere, sensory detail, and observation; Background affinity 0-4, Flexible affinity 5-8, Strong affinity 9-12.
- Expository Writer (0-12) reflects clarity, organization, comparison, and explanation; Background affinity 0-4, Flexible affinity 5-8, Strong affinity 9-12.
- Narrative Writer (0-12) reflects scenes, characters, conflict, change, and unfolding events; Background affinity 0-4, Flexible affinity 5-8, Strong affinity 9-12.
- Persuasive Writer (0-12) reflects claims, evidence, audience concerns, and calls to action; Background affinity 0-4, Flexible affinity 5-8, Strong affinity 9-12.
The highest score marks the strongest affinity, while scores within one point indicate a blended result.
Methodology and Scientific Basis
Methodologically, this is a structured self-report questionnaire. Each prompt presents a writing decision with four response options representing different modes; the result displays four scores. The display compares these scores, with the highest indicating the strongest affinity and scores within one point forming a blend.
As a writing style test, it profiles preference rather than writing quality. The comparison ranks relative affinity, not overall writing superiority; each mode can serve different writing purposes.
Its four-way structure is conceptually consistent with Bain's rhetorical modes, but this questionnaire is not an adaptation of that work. Connors traces the changing role of modes in composition, Reed connects discourse mode with computer-based writing tasks and writer ability, and Scott and Windsor examine narrative and expository discourse as distinct performance domains.
Together, these publications offer context for distinguishing writing functions, while the questionnaire remains its own online format. The questionnaire is an online self-reflection tool with no documented standardization; its displayed bands describe affinity levels.
Self-perception, current projects, and context can shift the outcome, so treat it as a snapshot for reflection and experimentation.
- Bain, Alexander. English Composition and Rhetoric: A Manual. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1866.
- Connors, Robert J. "The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse." College Composition and Communication, 32(4), 444-455, 1981. 10.58680/ccc198115892
- Reed, W. M. "The Effects of Computer-Based Writing Tasks and Mode of Discourse on the Performance and Attitudes of Writers of Varying Abilities." Computers in Human Behavior, 8(1), 97-119, 1992. 10.1016/0747-5632(92)90021-6
- Scott, Cheryl M., and Jennifer Windsor. "General Language Performance Measures in Spoken and Written Narrative and Expository Discourse of School-Age Children With Language Learning Disabilities." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43(2), 324-339, 2000. 10.1044/jslhr.4302.324
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