This Is Online Dating’s Surprising Biggest Dealbreaker

Bad spelling and grammar continues to be one of online dating’s biggest turn-offs for people searching for love.

Dating site Zoosk recently surveyed 9,000 singles, and 72% said that bad spelling and grammar would significantly lower their chances of continuing a conversation, listing it as a deal-breaker.

And a quarter of the surveyed singles said poor spelling gave the impression that their match wasn’t well educated or smart, as well as making the message appear rushed or showing a lack of interest & thought.

Pop culture acronyms

Another no-no was using pop culture acronyms like YOLO (you only live once), which Zoosk found would reduce your chances of getting a reply by 47%.

Even punctuation was said to be important, with 93% of Zoosk singles saying that adding a full stop at the end of each sentence would make someone more attractive.

And to improve your message rates, Zoosk found that adding an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence would raise your chances of getting a reply by 10%.

Women make more spelling mistakes

Before Valentine’s Day, Grammarly also published some data on the importance of grammar, finding some titbits such as men who write “women” rather than “girls” are 28% more successful, and women who used the words “divorce”, “separate” or “my ex” get 4% fewer messages.

The study also confirmed that spelling mistakes harm a potential match’s chances, and found that women make nearly twice as many grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors per 100 words as men do in their online dating profiles.

But despite this, men use 21.0% more words than women do in their responses to question in online dating profiles – perhaps because women receive so many more messages, with OkCupid finding women get a massive 17x the amount of messages as men.

Check out the full Grammarly report below: