Nikolas Baron of Grammarly contacted me earlier this week about an interesting infographic (shown below) created for National Grammar Day displaying the results from Grammarly’s study of celebrity Twitter accounts. He’d seen my post last year on National Grammar Day (which comes every year on March 4) and thought I’d like to share their take on celebrity tweets this year.
Like me, you’re probably asking, “Did someone really study celebrity Twitter accounts for their grammar or lack thereof?” Yes someone did, and it produced an interesting mix of information about age, native language and education as they relate to grammar accuracy. Grammarly’s press release notes:
- The top three most grammatically correct celebrities attended Harvard.
- Two of the top 10 celebrities speak English as a second language. Shakira’s native language is Spanish, and Narendra Modi’s is Hindi.
- In general, the older the celeb, the better he or she writes … .
Here’s what Grammarly came up with:
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Wow. I’m not surprised at the age factor, though. I’ve noticed that myself.
The ESL information was interesting too. A lot of people who come into court speak English as a second language. All of them speak English better than I speak their first language.
When I taught ESL for four years, I constantly told my adult students that I was proud of them and their progress, as I know it’s very difficult to learn another language; I only know English, sadly. I had a classmate in graduate school who spoke and wrote English as her second language, having learned English as a child in India, and she spoke with better grammar than some of our classmates. Did you know that Joseph Conrad, the author of Heart of Darkness, wrote English as a second language, too? That amazes me.
In fact, didn’t he originally write his name as Konrad? Now I have to go Google it!
Very interesting! I have a little trouble seeing Barack Obama and Narendra Modi as “celebrities,” but there you have it. 🙂
The concept of celebrity might be a bit broad in the study.
I’m not sure how much credit the president can be given for grammatical accuracy on his twitter account. The self-description there is: This account is run by Organizing for Action staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo.
He at least gets credit for hiring people who know good grammar, then! 😉