Good grammar fights back against onslaught of emojis

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

A recent correspondent to this newspaper wanted to make a point about an article that appeared the previous week – but they were fundamentally undermined by their reference to the offending ‘artickle’ which made it sound like a form of artistic endeavour with the aim of making your laugh.

We all make spelling errors and could be hung, drawn and quartered for our crimes against punctuation – but at least we’re from a generation that tries.

Unlike the texting community where poor spelling and bad grammar are the badges of honour that you wear on your digital lapel – or so it seemed up to now.

Hope (for pedants and purveyors of proper punctuation at least) comes in the form of new research which reveals that bad grammar can spell disaster for digital daters.

Because researchers found that those searching for love on dating websites are put off by poor spelling, typos and informal diction.

That goes for the likes of ‘C U L8R’ for a start which, for those of us who learned to write in the old way, is actually harder to type that the full phrase some believe it should replace.

But it also applies to simple typos in texts which probably suggest that either your thumbs are too thick-skinned or you really don’t care enough to read back before hitting ‘send’.

This research was carried out among 800 members of a large dating website in the Netherlands, who were asked to read fictitious profiles – with and without language errors.

They were then asked to rate the attractiveness of the profile owners – and the bulk of their replies suggest that lower attentiveness was aligned to lower attraction on the part of their potential partners.

Typographical mistakes included writing “teh” for “the” or “HEllo there” instead of “Hello there” – so not exactly capital offences as much as an indication of haste at the expense of due care and attention.

Of course it also applied to the old chestnut that will infuriate us pedants every time – not knowing the different between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’….and the number one head-wrecker of all; the difference between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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