Study: Boston Sports Fans Have Bad Grammar, Patriots Fans Are Worst Of All Boston Teams
By Matt Dolloff (@mattdolloff)
BOSTON (CBS) -- Boston sports teams (mainly the Patriots) are used to winning on the field. But it seems that the same can't be said for fans who argue on the internet.
A new study by free grammar-checking app Grammarly, which is touted as a superior alternative to Microsoft Word, concluded that - on the internet, anyway - Boston sports fans ranked 31st out of 42 cities in grammar mistakes per 100 words, with 8.27. Boston actually tied with New York for 31st, and ranked just behind Miami and Houston.
The fans of specific teams were also tracked for grammar mistakes, and in Boston it was Patriots fans who had the worst average, with 11.6 grammar mistakes per 100 words, followed by the Red Sox (8.3) and Celtics (4.91). Bruins/NHL fans were not part of the study.
Grammarly conducted the study by gathering the top five comments under articles about given teams on their official websites, as well as fan sites like SB Nation, until they had 100 comments for each team studied. They only counted indisputable errors like spelling, punctuation, and subject-verb disagreement.
These numbers certainly don't provide a definitive picture of any entire fanbase. These are just the fans who bother to comment on articles on the internet. Also, five of the top six cities benefitted from having only one team to study: fans in Memphis (Grizzlies), Sacramento (Kings), San Antonio (Spurs), Orlando (Magic), and Brooklyn (Nets) all had a very low number of mistakes. NBA fans rated by far the best of the three sports with 4.55 mistakes per 100 words, followed by baseball (7.9) and football (7.97).
Conveniently, the Patriots play the Tennessee Titans this week. Why is that convenient? Nashville ranked dead-last on the list - more specifically, Titans fans - with 11.2 mistakes per 100 words. Get ready for some sloppy comment wars on Sunday.
Note: Grammarly found exactly ONE mistake in this article that it deemed "critical." See if you can spot it.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read more from Matt here. Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.
