Readers, rightly, are hard taskmasters. “Snore off Fishwick,” one once wrote to me, at 11.38pm, “you’re as droll on Twitter as you are in your often grammatically terrible self-absorbed articles.” My periphrastic friend was only looking out for me. Research suggests that, as well as a GSOH, grammatical pedantry is the key to winning hearts online. Your dangling modifier is not impressing anyone. It’s all about how you use it.
“Researchers have found that singletons searching for love on dating websites are put off by poor spelling, typos and informal diction,” The Times reported on Tuesday, confirming what my editors have always told me: learn how to write or it will harm your long-term prospects.
As Judd Apatow did for the nerd in the Noughties, online dating is now doing for the oft-maligned grammar tyrant. The news comes too late for the sexy pedant look to boost gaudy Halloween costume sales this year, but surely it’s only a matter of time. Clippy the Microsoft Office assistant? Hubba hubba.
The evolutionary progression here is actually heartening. Society is, belatedly, anointing a more worthy model of species alpha in the modern fake news era: less natural selection, more constant correction. Forget the washboard abs, the hourglasses, the dad bods. The ideal match? “Fastidious, constantly reminding me it’s pronounced ‘sup-pos-ed-ly’, a real fact-checker.” Swoon!
The researchers asked a sample of members of a dating website in the Netherlands to read fictitious profiles with and without language errors, then rate the attractiveness of each profile owner. “Typographical mistakes, such as writing “teh” for “the” or “HEllo there” instead of “Hello there”, were perceived as a signal of inattentiveness,” we’re told.
Obviously, grammar matters. The hyphen that turns a noun phrase into a compound adjective is vital to ensure your light-haired boyfriend remains that familiar blond, instead of dropping several stone and growing a moustache.
Moreover, in an age when it can feel like everybody’s talking and nobody’s listening, is it any wonder perceived signals of attentiveness are all the rage?
It follows an attack on the “master-hyphenators” published in the latest edition of English Today, a journal from Cambridge University Press that aims to track how the language is evolving.
The journal has published investigations into the misuse of the “intrusive hyphen”, singling out writers including Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye.
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But worry not, fellow grammar slobs. I suspect the pedant is a short-lived Adonis. Grammar nerds are often out to prove their own intellectual superiority, which is never a good look. Imagine being called out for writing “love u” three years in (“It’s Y-O-U”).
Relationships, like language, thrive on variation. Using your own personal language is a sign of healthy communication. Plus, Ian Hislop is married with two children. Those intrusive hyphens don’t seem to have made a difference.
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