"But, perhaps, I keep no journal."

"Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am
not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt is
equally possible. Not keep a journal! How are your absent
cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath
without one? How are the civilities and compliments of
every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted
down every evening in a journal? How are your various
dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of
your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described
in all their diversities, without having constant recourse
to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of
young ladies' ways as you wish to believe me; it is this
delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes
to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are
so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent
of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.
Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must
be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal."

"I have sometimes thought," said Catherine, doubtingly,
"whether ladies do write so much better letters than gentlemen!
That is--I should not think the superiority was always on our side."

"As far as I have had opportunity of judging,
it appears to me that the usual style of letter-writing
among women is faultless, except in three particulars."

"And what are they?"

"A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention
to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar."

"Upon my word! I need not have been afraid of disclaiming
the compliment. You do not think too highly of us in that way."

"I should no more lay it down as a general rule that
women write better letters than men, than that they sing
better duets, or draw better landscapes. In every power,
of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty
fairly divided between the sexes."

~ Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey