The commenting section of a sports team website has always been an interesting place to spend one’s time. On the one hand, it can be a place where diehard fans come together as a community to discuss their favorite team with like-minded individuals who share their same passion for NFL football. Then again, it can also be a place for poorly spelled anger and hostility, where it’s common to see things written like “your a moran,” or “I cant wait to see youre reaction when they loose tonight.”
That’s right, spelling and grammar mistakes are common for just about every commenting section on the Internet. But thanks to the folks at Grammarly, we now know where each NFL team’s fans stack up when it comes to how well they grasp the English language.
Grammarly, an automated proofreading company, can use algorithms to check writing for more than 400 types of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. Armed with this, the Count did the one thing that made the most sense: Make Grammarly rank each NFL fan base on its writing skills. To do so, they reviewed 150 reader comments that were at least 50 words long from the news section of each NFL team website (12,728 total words, on average, per team). The Redskins finished dead last with 16.5 mistakes per 100 words—roughly 30% worse than New Orleans Saints fans, the NFL’s second most typo-prone fan base.
Sorry, Redskins fans. If it’s any consolation, we’re guessing the results were skewed by 16.5% of the comments simply missing the comma in the sentence, “You suck, Daniel Snyder.”
