Bad Grammar, Spelling Errors Make You Less Attractive on Dating Sites, Says Study

Planning to get married and looking for a match online? Or just waiting to find your soul-mate? Make sure you are good with your spellings and grammar.

According to a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, being able to spell and using correct grammar are important criteria while determining whether one can get a match on a dating site.

In the study, involving more than 800 people in the Netherlands, researcher found errors such as writing 'teh' instead of 'the' and using upper cases in wrong places as detrimental in finding a match as they suggested laziness and lack of attention to detail. Researchers worked with members of a dating site who had to read through fake profiles with language errors and those that had impeccable grammar.

Lead author of the study Tess Van der Zanden said inattentiveness in case of online dating showed a lack of effort and was perceived as unappealing.

Van der Zanden told PsyPost that a high number of participants, however, did not know whether the profile they were visiting had language errors or not. Of the people who did notice the language, errors made the prospective match less attractive.

The researcher said that if the person whose profile they were checking was extremely attractive, people were more likely to ignore textual mistakes in the profiles, Daily Mail reported.

Thus, the study found that profiles that had the same images saw participants liking the version with no mistakes as compared to the one that sported errors.

Van de Zanden, thus concluded that one should try and avoid language errors in their profile texts to find prospective matches in online dating.