Love Depends On Whom Has the Better Grammar

Grammarly, a writing-related website, decided to find out if people’s writing skills affect their chances of finding romance. Now, they may not seem like experts in the romance department, but they found help: eHarmony.

I’m not terribly familiar with eHarmony or infographics, and maybe that’s part of why I was surprised at their conclusion: Writing skills matter. Seriously. You can see the results here:

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I know, I know: What about the well-loved tropes of romance, like boobs, muscles, and money?

But language matters, too. For instance, the infographic (who’s in charge of inventing these words?) shows that if you’re a guy and call your potential dates “girls”, you’re 28% less successful. If you’re a woman and use words like “divorce”, or “ex”, you get 4% fewer messages on looking for love sites. That may not seem like much, but it could be the four percent with Clooney’s looks at Trump’s money.

Here’s one that kind of shocked me: Men who use the word “whom” properly get 31% more contacts from women, according to the eHarmony research. Amazing. I mean, whom even uses that word anymore?

When a woman makes a writing error, it doesn’t make much difference in their chances. Men do not think with their spelling brain. However, men who make two or more spelling mistakes reduce their chances by 14%. Indiana Jones never had much luck against grammar Nazis.

Here’s a shocker: Men use more words than women when writing their online dating profiles. I would have thought it the other way around. Maybe they’re struggling for more “whom” in there.

Both men and women ranked grammar as more important than confidence in a potential date. My conclusion: If dating sites had been around when I was first dating, I’d have been fighting off women, instead of trying to impress then with my humbleness. After all, at twenty-something my experience with submitting to publishers made me a true typo paranoid.

Oh, I still make grammar mistakes. That can be confirmed by anyone whom knows me.

https://www.grammarly.com/spell-check