Anyone who spends more time than they should on Facebook has probably come across a few of their relatives or friends posting comments in support of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Those comments are usually pretty cringeworthy for a couple of reasons, but no matter what your political stripe, one of those reasons is the poor grammar and spelling. Proofreading company Grammarly actually conducted a study on Facebook comments of the current crop of 2016 presidential hopefuls and found that yes, indeed, Trump supporters have the worst grammar. In other words, it’s not just you.
Grammarly stated that they approached the study with “a light heart and heavy-hitting algorithms,” so consider that an invitation to take this whole thing with a grain of salt. But can we really deny Science when we see multiple daily occurrences of the exact results that were found? Check out these results and try to deny they’re real.
The company analyzed comments on 19 presidential candidates’ Facebook pages and found that: 1) supporters of Republican candidates make more mistakes than supporters of Democrats; 2) supporters of Republican candidates use fewer unique words than supporters of Democrats; and 3) Donald Trump supporters made the most mistakes of them all.
Not that surprising, considering that Donald Trump is a walking, talking internet comments section.
Now, Grammarly isn’t saying that Trump supporters — or people who support Republicans — are straight-up stupid. What they’re counting is technical errors per 100 words that come about while in the midst of “passionate discussions” online. Agree or disagree, this is not a measure of intelligence; more like a measure of clumsy and/or lazy typing. Here is the chart outlining the findings. Also consider that there are only five Democratic candidates compared to 14 Republican candidates, making the sheer number of errors slanted towards the GOP supporters simply because there are more candidates to study. Check the infographic at Grammarly, because infographics don’t lie.
So, next time you see that one day-drinking friend or that rarely heard from, secluded aunt leaving a comment like “DONALD TRUMP NO LOSERS GETS PEOPLE AMERICAN WINS,” now you know you’re justified in your grammar-nazi outrage.
Source: The Washington Post