When words betray you

Writing about the UK election debates for the New Scientist Raj Persaud and James W. Pennebaker say:

Over the last 10 years, more than a dozen studies have analysed the language of honesty and deception. People are more likely to be telling the truth if:their sentences are longer and more complex;they use I-words more (e.g. “I”, “me”, “my”);they use bigger words;they make more references to time and motion, andthey use more self-reflective words such as “realise”, “understand”, and “think”.
The best markers of deception are “would-should-could” verbs, positive emotion words, and you-words.

I wonder if this applies to writing and whether savvy (or cynical) writers can use this information to manipulate readers.

Probably not. After all, Persaud and Pennebaker finish saying: “Our approach is more accurate than flipping a coin but far from 100 percent accurate”.

The curious aspect of this research is that some of it quite literally contradicts what journalists are taught in training and my advice in how to write for the web.

• Journalists are taught to write shorter sentences and to keep them as simple as possible. This aids comprehension.
• Journalists are trained to keep themselves out of the story. Or at least they were until sometime in the 1980s.
• Shorter words are preferred to long words. Again, this is about comprehension.

There's an interesting follow-up blog post from the authors at Wordwatchers: The 2010 UK Election: The second debate.