18 QRCA VIEWS FA LL 2 014 www.qrca.org
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TRENDS
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DAMN, DARN, AND F***
Gender influences word choice
By Annie Pettit
Chief Research Officer, Peanut Labs
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Vice President, Standards, Research Now
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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apettit@researchnow.com
DARN
DAMN
I
learned how to type in Grade 9. It
was horrible. The teacher called out
series of letters and we had to type
along with her. H H H. G G G. H H
H. These days, typing is like breathing.
Parents put tablets in front of their
3-month old babies and soon those babies
are picking out pictures, numbers, and let-
ters. You type, therefore, you are. You use
social media, therefore, you are.
But the words people use differ so
much. Our reading choices, schools, cul-
ture, life stages, cohorts, friends, and fami-
ly mean that each of us has created a
unique personal dictionary that we access
differently, depending upon what we're
doing. You'll never catch me using harsh
profanity in social media, but you might
catch me using it in real life. You'll proba-
bly hear me say gotta, woulda, or should
of in real life, but you'll only ever see me
write have got to, would have, and should
have.
In this article, I'll outline some of the
insights my company gleaned recently
about ways that people express themselves
in the online space in terms of things like
slang, profanity, acronyms, and grammar,
according to their gender and age. We
focused on five to 15 of the most com-
