A post about grammar and pro sports. What could go wrong?
December 16, 2015 12:26 AM Subscribe
Footbal fans ,NOT, writ, so gud. Aficionados of basketball, however, are erudite. Baseball fans are ok. Grammarly has graded a number of comments from sports related websites for grammar and spelling, then tabulated the results by league, team and city.
Alternate headline: basketball fans may be less passionate than baseball or American football fans.
posted by YAMWAK at 2:35 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by YAMWAK at 2:35 AM on December 16, 2015
Passionate? Maybe not about a team or a player but if you mean passionate about the game it's pistols at 30 paces sir!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:22 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:22 AM on December 16, 2015
no plot of grammar ability v sporting results? i'm looking for a correlation coefficient here. and wondering what sign it will have.
posted by andrewcooke at 3:59 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by andrewcooke at 3:59 AM on December 16, 2015
Philadelphia lands at #24 out of 42 cities. So, no, there's no relation between fan grammar and field performance.
What, no NHL? Sticks at dawn, Grammarly...
posted by GhostintheMachine at 4:17 AM on December 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
What, no NHL? Sticks at dawn, Grammarly...
posted by GhostintheMachine at 4:17 AM on December 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
Correlation does not equal causation. Most of the worst offenders come from fans of sports teams from larger cities with known poor inner-city school districts, such as Washington DC, New Orleans, and Atlanta.
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:22 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:22 AM on December 16, 2015
I wonder if some of the result is driven by the football fans at outdoor stadiums having frozen fingers interfering with texting ability.
posted by srboisvert at 5:27 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by srboisvert at 5:27 AM on December 16, 2015
I think the most important lesson to take from this article is that Memphis is 4.45 times smarter than Nashville.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:00 AM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:00 AM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
Makes me happy to see the best klans in baseball down there at 41.
Anyways, hate aside, there're tons of reasons this is dumb. I'm fairly active on SBNation, but the radically different levels of moderation and styles of community on different subsites there means that you can't really compare them accurate. The Notre Dame site is heavily moderated, especially during games, so there aren't any incoherently drunk "FUK TIS FUK EVERTHING" posts to sample, whereas the Bears site is more of a free-for-all, so you get more drunken yelling and more spelling errors, and also just a different clientele. The EDSBS commentariat will run you out if u dnt rite gud, but most team sites will put up with tons of quirks in writing and spelling.
posted by protocoach at 6:07 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
Anyways, hate aside, there're tons of reasons this is dumb. I'm fairly active on SBNation, but the radically different levels of moderation and styles of community on different subsites there means that you can't really compare them accurate. The Notre Dame site is heavily moderated, especially during games, so there aren't any incoherently drunk "FUK TIS FUK EVERTHING" posts to sample, whereas the Bears site is more of a free-for-all, so you get more drunken yelling and more spelling errors, and also just a different clientele. The EDSBS commentariat will run you out if u dnt rite gud, but most team sites will put up with tons of quirks in writing and spelling.
posted by protocoach at 6:07 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
If baseball folks used correct grammar, Yogi Berra wouldn't have existed and that would have been a huge loss to humanity as a whole.
posted by eriko at 6:56 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by eriko at 6:56 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
> Most of the worst offenders come from fans of sports teams from larger cities with known poor inner-city school districts, such as Washington DC, New Orleans, and Atlanta.
The actual District of Columbia is a pretty small piece of the DC metro area population, and those poor inner-city schools are more-than-balanced out by the Fairfax County, VA and Montgomery County, MD school districts, which are among the best-funded and highest-performing school districts in the country.
Though really, the methodology as described in the fine print is a bit confusing in its correlative assumptions anyway -- "fans in each city" is not equivalent to "fans commenting on [particular city's] teams."
posted by desuetude at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
The actual District of Columbia is a pretty small piece of the DC metro area population, and those poor inner-city schools are more-than-balanced out by the Fairfax County, VA and Montgomery County, MD school districts, which are among the best-funded and highest-performing school districts in the country.
Though really, the methodology as described in the fine print is a bit confusing in its correlative assumptions anyway -- "fans in each city" is not equivalent to "fans commenting on [particular city's] teams."
posted by desuetude at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm assuming Buffalo is so low because most of our sports-related communication is through moans of despair.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:44 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:44 AM on December 16, 2015
Let us note that the absolute rock bottom worst team is the Washington NFL Franchise.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:53 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by Navelgazer at 7:53 AM on December 16, 2015
Among individual teams, the most errors came from fans of the Washington [offensive racial slur]s, whose rate of 16.5 mistakes per 100 words was unrivaled.
I have always thought that only an imbecile could support this team.
On preview: dammit, Navelgazer
posted by Zonker at 7:57 AM on December 16, 2015
I have always thought that only an imbecile could support this team.
On preview: dammit, Navelgazer
posted by Zonker at 7:57 AM on December 16, 2015
Whoever says that Pittburghers have bad grammer is a jagoff who needs smacked.
posted by octothorpe at 8:28 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 8:28 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
What, no NHL? Sticks at dawn, Grammarly...
Hockey fans ate the pencil.
posted by lumpenprole at 8:32 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
Hockey fans ate the pencil.
posted by lumpenprole at 8:32 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
See also: Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Yogi Berra, and,I dunno, Steve Largeant?
posted by lkc at 9:14 PM on December 16, 2015
posted by lkc at 9:14 PM on December 16, 2015
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posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 12:54 AM on December 16, 2015