“How does the style of writing differ between analysts and common

fans in regards to their viewpoints?”

Introduction

The community that I have been researching consists of NFL fans and analysts. As the

season is starting in the next two months, people like to go to the internet to see what is going

on and how they can make their voices heard. They both like to voice opinions and facts on

different subjects, especially now that the season is approaching. I have not been focussing on

those opinions or facts that they are so kind to share, but instead I have been focussing on the

style that they write in. For example, if their writing is formal or informal.

There is a very big distinction between a fan and an analyst. A fan is someone who

loves to watch the sport and cheers for a team, but these people do not get paid to investigate

issues happening on team, breaking news about players, or explaining situations that are

happening around the league. The fan is not always the most knowledgeable on every topic

about the sport. An analyst is the opposite. It is an analyst’s job to investigate issues

happening on team, breaking news about players, or explaining situations that are happening

around the league. This is their means of providing for their families and supporting

themselves. Before researching, I assumed that they both wrote and spoke in the same casual

way and I would not find a difference between the two. This caused me to be surprised to find

that I was wrong about that matter. Most of the time, there is a definitive distinction between the

two groups writing, but on some occasions, that is not the case.

While researching, there were not any published secondary sources that described this

community, so I had to get creative. I had to find articles that described parts of the question at

hand and then use that to describe my primary sources. For example, the research question is

asking about the style in which these two categories within this community write, so I found

articles that describe the formality of people’s writing and why it is that they write in this manner.
Two of the secondary sources explain as to why people write in informal ways and if it affects

their literacy or not, and the third explains how fans react quickly and why it is they jump to

conclusions so fast and write on certain platforms. None of these explain why the analyst write

in the way they do, but to me that was pretty self explanatory. It is their job to give information

to the masses, and they cannot write in slang or other forms of informal language because they

want everyone to understand what it is they are saying and not misconstrue their messages.

Theses secondary sources help me to describe the writing of the primary sources because I

know what to look for. For example, in Stephen A Smith’s instagram post I will know what is

written informally and why. This could also be seen in the blog post written by an Atlanta

Falcons fan. On the other hand, these secondary sources will tell me what informal material in

missing in Adam Schefter’s article that inherently makes it formal. After looking through these

primary sources and comparing them to the patterns that were found in the secondary sources,

I will be able to find out if the writing style really do differ between the National Football League

fans and the analysts that cover everything that happens within that league.

Primary Sources

Schefter A. (June 13, 2019) Sources: Pats file tampering charges vs. Texans. Retrieved

from https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/26959092/sources-pats-file-tampering-charges-vs-texa

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The first primary document that I will be researching into are the articles by ESPN Senior

Writer Adam Schefter on ESPN.com. This article that Schefter wrote is called “Sources: Pats

file tampering charges vs. Texans.” In this article, Schefter is reporting about how the New

England Patriots are filing tampering charges against the Houston Texans for how they went

about trying to hire Patriots, director of player personnel, Nick Caserio, as their general

manager. Schefter even provides the information that most of this was happening during the

Patriots’ Super Bowl ring ceremony. Schefter, being a sports analyst for a living, has perfected
his craft when he is writing different articles. For example, Schefter states, “The league is

expected to gather relevant information to open its investigation against Houston, sources said.”

In this quote, he makes sure to give credit to someone else because he did not get the

information on his own, and this helps to show his credibility. Also, throughout the article,

Schefter states the facts of what is going on rather than giving his opinion because he is a

reporter and it is his duty to tell the world what is happening in the sports world, so they can

make their own opinions about what is going on and what will happen. Also, to stick to his

formal style, he follows up at the end of the article with a definition of the infringement, to help

the fans to understand how the Texans are really doing wrong.

Smith S. A. (July 11, 2019). Will Gordon Get A New Deal? Retrieved from

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzy80_ahnQH/?igshid=1vd6rxx1extml

The second of my three primary documents that I will be diving deeper into with my

research is the instagram of sports journalist Stephen A. Smith. The specific post that I am

alluding to right now was posted on Stephen A. Smith’s Instagram account on July 11, 2019. In

this Instagram post, Smith is talking about how Melvin Gordon has gone to the Los Angeles

Chargers and said that he wants to sign a new contract worth more or he wants to be traded to

another team. Smith does not think that Gordon will get the deal that he wants due to the fact

that he does not think he is at that high of a level to get paid as much as he wants. Smith is not

your normal sports analyst. He is not the person that goes to the teams and gets information

first hand from them, but he is one of the first people that those investigators tell their

information to. He is more of a mix between and analyst and a fan because he will report what

is going on, but he will also make sure that your know his opinion on the topic as well. Like

Schefter, he is normally very formal style he speaks about things, but he will also get very

passionate about what he is saying and start speaking with a little bit of slang. Also, in the

comments section of his post, the common fans style of writing and speaking are extremely
informal. Most of them are speaking in short phrases with a lot of slang words mixed in. Most

of what they are saying is not in complete sentences and very opinionated to what Smith was

talking about. Sometimes even analysts can become normal fans themselves and speak or

write the same way they do. This example alone could answer the research question by itself.

This is because it shows that there is a clear difference between the analyst’s, Stephen A Smith,

and the fans’ writing styles. Smith used a more formal approach to his wording and message

whereas the fans kept their language extremely informal by using slang, shortened words, and

“textisms.”

Terrell R. (2019). The pressure is on the Atlanta Falcons in 2019. Retrieved from

https://bloggingdirty.com/2019/07/04/pressure-atlanta-falcons-2019/

The last primary document that I will be looking deeper into is a website that fans of the

Atlanta Falcons use to express how they feel about their team and what is going on. An article

on this site that I find to be interesting towards the question at hand is an article called “The

pressure is on the Atlanta Falcons in 2019” by Ross Terrell. In this article, Terrell states all of the

different expectations that are on the team by the fans and even the owner. These new

expectations are coming from the past couple of seasons where the Falcons have shown a lot

of promise, but something has always come up and held them back from their ultimate goal,

winning the Lombardi Trophy. Terrell explains how last season, the team was riddled with

injuries causing them to have a defense that was less than spectacular. This year those players

are back, and this is the cause for even higher expectations. Also, Terrell explains how the

Falcons have been known for having such a high powered offense, but the defense has been

lagging behind causing the head coach, Dan Quinn, to step in and coach them himself. All of

this information is being expressed from a normal fan’s point of view rather than an analyst’s

that gets paid to find out information for a living. The site that this article is from only publishes

articles by fans, so all fans have an opportunity to express their feelings on what is going on
with their team. This shows how much the fans care and want others to see things the same

way as they do. Reading through this article, it is very obvious that the article is written by

someone that is not a professional journalist do to the way he writes. It sounds like he is talking

to a friend rather than reporting and using technical language. Also, unlike professional

analysts, he is not using a lot of recent facts that have just been acquired and he is not using a

lot of numbers to back up his claims. As a fan, these things are not expected out of him.

Though, his style of writing was a lot more formal that what has been seen in the instagram

post. When it comes to definitely saying if his communication style is formal or informal, it would

be safe to say it is on the more informal side if you are to compare it to what we have seen as

an example of formal writing.

Secondary Sources

Wood C., Kemp N., Waldron S. (2014). Exploring the longitudinal relationships between

the use of grammar in text messaging and performance on grammatical tasks. British Journal of

Developmental Psychology, 32(4), 415-429. DOI:

http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.net.ucf.edu/10.1111/bjdp.12049

The last secondary source that I have found, authors Clare Wood, Nenagh Kemp, and

Sam Waldron state something similar to the one previously stated. This article informs the

readers that the literacy level of people that use textisms are not hindered. This is in reference

to peoples’ spelling and their grammar. It is thought that their spelling is not hindered because a

lot of texts, or in the case of my research on social media or comment boards, because they

tend to type out their words more phonetically. This means they are actually more likely to spell

the word correctly in a formal setting. On the other hand, you might think the use of this kind of

informal language may affect the writers’ knowledge of grammar. This has not been studied as

much, but it is not the case. In reality, people that tend to type informally like this, will usually
use the correct grammar if it is the only way to keep the meaning of their message the same.

This means that all of these people that are commenting on posts by analysts on social media

or the internet, could use more formal language if they really wanted to. Each and every one of

them personally choose to write in the formality that they use. It just so happens that they tend

to write informally due to the ease. They know that no one actually cares if they forget a comma

or do not capitalize a letter because most people will not see it, and they will not be judged for

not putting in the extra effort into their message.

Rosen L. D., Chang J., Erwin L., Carrier L. M., Cheever N. A. (2010). The Relationship

Between “Textisms” and Formal and Informal Writing Among Young Adults. Communication

Research, 37(3), 420-440. DOI: 10.1177/0093650210362465

On platforms like Instagram and comments sections on blogs, most people like to use

slang or shorthand to write out what they want to say. Larry D. Rosen, Jennifer Chang, Lynne

Erwin, L. Mark Carrier, and Nancy A. Cheever wrote the article “The Relationship Between

‘Textisms’ and Formal and Informal Writing Among Young Adults” which explains how the youth

and young adults’ writing have changed and compare to past generations from that same age

group. In this article, they find that the scores between the two do not entirely correlate causing

there to not be very much of a change. This article was written in 2010 which is when

smartphones started to get bigger and right before social media started to break out. For this

reason, I find that all the information that they found about texting also refers to how people

write on their social media accounts. For example, the authors state that there was a character

limit for each text causing people to write in shorthand, emoji, or other ways to shorten the

length of their messages without compromising what they were trying to say. That is the exact

same thing that is happening with social media. Twitter has a character limit to what you can
post, and if your caption or comment on instagram is too long, you have to know that most

people will not even bother to read it. This is the kind of informal writing style that most common

fans use to get their points across on Instagram. When the common fans write articles, they

tend not to do this as much, but sometimes you will see them slip up and write like they would a

text, or it will be seen that they use words that are smaller or less scholarly. The analysts, on

the other hand, tend not to use this as much or at all. This is because they are writing for a

living, and know that if they were to write like that all the time, they would lose their credibility as

a reporter and people would stop listening to them. Eventually, they might even lose their job.

Informal writing seen more by the common fans and almost never by the analysts.

Page J. T., Duffy M., Frisby C., Perreault G. (2016). Richard Sherman speaks and

almost breaks the Internet: Race, media, and football. Howard Journal of Communications,

27(3), 270-289. DOI: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.net.ucf.edu/10.1080/10646175.2016.1176969

My first secondary source is by Janis Teruggi Page, Margaret Duffy, Cynthia Frisby, and

Gregory Perreault. They describe the events that occurred following Richard Sherman’s

outburst on camera with Erin Andrews, about his amazing play against Michael Crabtree to win

the game. His reaction was very energetic, exciting, and intense. This caused social media to

explode. Not just about the way he acted, but that led into talks about race and football as a

whole. Andrews stated that she had received so many messages that her Twitter feed froze.

This shows how much fans care about their teams, individual players, and the sport of football

that they were going so crazy on social media. This article dives more into the statistics from

Twitter and other platforms after this event, but that was not the part I was interested in. I was

interested in the interview itself and the speedy reaction from the fans. Throughout the

interview, Andrews, being an analyst and reporter, asked Sherman formal questions that he then

answered in his own way causing the influx of fan messages. This shows how the smallest
thing can cause NFL fans to go crazy. About half of the tweets were negative and the other half

were positive, but most of those fan tweets were all written in an informal manner. That is not

their fault entirely. It is also the fault of the platform because each tweet is only allowed so

many characters and fans were trying to respond to what was going on as fast as they could.