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Are you a massive pedant? This is probably why

Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

R U the kind of person who regularly forgifs typos and mistakes in grammer?

If not, it may say something about you.

A new study, called If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages recruited 83 volunteers and asked them to evaluate 12 replies to an online ad for a new housemate.

Some responses contained errors, and participants were shown one version of each email - either well-written, with typos, or with grammatical errors.

The results showed that both typos and "grammos" (grammar errors) had a negative impact on the likelihood that a respondent would accept the sender of the email as a housemate - and that introverts tended to judge typos more harshly than extroverts.

In addition, less agreeable people were tougher on grammar errors. Overall people tended to judge typos more harshly than errors in grammar.

Julie E Boland and Robin Queen, the authors of the study, concluded:

The primary contribution of the current study is the finding that personality traits influence our reactions to written errors… Although personality traits have been linked to variation in production, particularly the use of specific lexical items, this is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners/readers have an effect on the overall assessment of variable language.

So how anal are you about Grammar? Take our quiz, below, and let us know how you get on in the comments:

HT Discover

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