The secret langague of snail mail

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin shows how speech patterns function as a barometer of relationships, reports the Economist. Take, for example, the famously volatile union between Plath and Hughes:

The style-matching approach proved to be a powerful bellwether of marriages as well. Style-matching scores were calculated between poetry written by two pairs of spouses, Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning and 20th century poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, which mapped major changes in their relationships (...)Differences in style matching between the two couples were revealing as well. Even at the high point of their marriage, Hughes and Plath were less in sync than the historically more harmonious Brownings were at their lowest point.

Fascinating, but the influence of written repartee on relationships doesn't stop there:

But what's truly extraordinary, I think, is the finding that not only letter-writing between two people is affected, but that even great poets alter their poetry style depending on how their relationship is going. It also reveals something about the nature of the relationship: Plath's style, for instance, adapted more to that of Hughes than his did to hers.

While Harriet re-hashes her old emails and figures out her "style-matching" score, you can read the entire study here.