A study has found that people who police other people's grammar are less agreeable.
The paper in question was published in the journal PLOS One, and was entitled, 'If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages [sic].'
Researchers used the study to explore how personality types vary through language by analyzing how participants responded to grammatical mistakes in writing.
As part of the investigation, University of Michigan researchers asked 83 people to read email responses to two advertisements for a new housemate.
One ad, the control, was perfectly written and proofread, containing no mistakes whatsoever. Meanwhile, the other boasted a large number of obvious errors, such as writing "teh" instead of "the", or mixing up "too/to" and "it's/its".
Participants were then asked to judge the person who wrote each email, making assumption on their personality based solely on their writing skills. They were then asked to fill out a personality assessment regarding their own character.
The results showed that extroverted people were more likely to ignore mistakes, while introverts were more likely to draw attention to them and judge the author for their perceived flaws.
The study also determined that conscientious people were more sensitive to typos, while those with less agreeable personalities, who had a higher tolerance for conflict and aggression, were more annoyed by grammatical errors.
The paper itself notes:
"Less agreeable participants showed more sensitivity to [grammar errors] than participants high in agreeability, perhaps because less agreeable people are less tolerant of deviations from convention.
"This pattern is consistent with our speculation that typos and [grammar errors] carry different evaluative weight and potentially different social meanings."
Commenting on the findings, lead researcher Julie Boland stated: "This is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners/readers have an effect on the interpretation of language.
"In this experiment, we examined the social judgments that readers made about the writers."
So there you have it: if you police other people's grammar, and like dotting eyes and crossing tees, then maybe think about how you come across to others, and soften your criticism a little bit.