Step up your grammar game if you want to do well on dating sites
Do u online date? If so, in honor of National Grammar Day, which was March 4, you should probably start minding your Ps and Qs and message people in complete sentences. Dating site Zoosk studied this topic for us (thank you), and found that bad grammar could mean less success with online dating. R u surprised?!
I know, I know, typing “u” takes about a millisecond faster than “you,” but how’s your abbreviated messaging language going for you—i.e., are you getting dates with people you send eclipsed sentences to, like “how r u,” “whats up” (sans apostrophe), and “your” instead of “you’re”?
Yep, Zoosk found that if your matches and potential dates are going MIA and ghosting, it could very well be because of the content of your messages… and typos. Over 1,200 single millennials were surveyed by Zoosk (they surveyed over 9,000 users in all) and over half (!) of them, 51 percent, said that poor grammar is a deal-breaker, reported Mic.
And 64 percent of millennials said that blatant spelling errors were #1 when it came to grammatical turn-offs. As a writer, I am wooed by words, so I agree—complete sentences (and comma placement) are everything.
So, what did Zoosk users think of someone who uses poor grammar? Twenty-three percent thought it means that someone is “uneducated or unintelligent,” and 32 percent said they assume the person “didn’t take the time to proofread, so they must be lazy or just not care.”
But, you don’t have to necessarily stop typing grammatically incorrect, incomplete sentences just yet, because 36 percent were cool with it and thought it’s “nothing, they just made some mistakes.” However, you don’t know if the person you message will be among that 36 percent, so you probably want to spend the extra seconds using spell check and apostrophes and the right form of “their.”
Just in case, here are some refreshers for you.
After all, isn’t your dating life worth the extra few seconds, apostrophes, and commas it’ll take to find love?
