I can’t think why I’m bringing this to your attention but new research suggests people who are angered by poorly written correspondence are apparently more likely than most to be grumpy loners than more relaxed individuals who don’t care about such petty matters as grammar and spelling.
In the first study into the impact that the personality traits of listeners or readers has on their interpretation of language, the University of Michigan invited 83 people to read a false advert for a new housemate, which was littered with mistakes and rate how much they were irritated by them. The errors included typos as well as common grammatical mistakes such as misspelling ‘your/you’re’ and ‘to/too’. The guinea pigs were asked to rate the perceived intelligence and friendliness of the author and rate them on characteristics including openness and how neurotic they were likely to be.
The experiment showed that people who were bothered by the errors were more likely to be rated as ‘disagreeable’ and ‘introverted’ in the personality tests. The results reinforced previous research showing that poor written English can have serious implications. For example, people who made errors on applications for a bank loan were more likely to be turned down than those who did not.
Another reason to double-check your writing before pressing ‘send’ on that all-important email!
