I ran across this in an audiobook my father is listening to.

"The letter was in a man's hand"

Excuse me, wtf? I have never once gendered handwriting or thought you could infer gender from it.

@nighteyes that used to be a culturally thing which included different hand writing classes for women and men. Jane Austen made fun of the idea in Emma when one of the male romantic leads is noted to have as penmanship "flowing feminine hand" and all the women find that sexy

@nighteyes a lot of modern readers assume she was also saying he was genderqueer or gay and that might have been her intent (she certainly knew some LGBTQ people) but Dear Aunt Jane was from an educator background and a lot of her letters and books liked to make fun of those divides

@ZiaMacPine huh. I didn't know that.

@nighteyes I assume your father's audio is a mystery novel