With all our yes ma'ams and no sirs, we Texans are a well-mannered bunch . . . and now there's statistical data to prove it.
According to a new study, the Lone Star State has the fourth lowest rate of swearing in the United States with Washington recording the least amount of swears. Meanwhile, Ohio won "honors" as the most foul-mouthed state in the union with Maryland and New Jersey following closely behind (and presumably pissed they didn't get top prize).
Marchex — the Seattle-based mobile tech which conducted the research — used speech-recognition software to analyze 600,000 customer service calls made throughout the country. Calls were monitored in 30 industries, covering from auto dealerships to the dreaded cable service call center. Analysts "scanned for curse words from A to F to S," the study explains.
KTRK Ch. 13 sifted through the Marchex info to uncover that Texans only cursed once out of every 227 phone calls. The stats also revealed that men are 66 percent more likely to swear than women and that callers are twice as likely to drop the F-bomb in the morning than at night.
The study examined common courtesy as well, ranking the use of "please" and "thank you" amongst the same batch of calls. As expected, it was a clean sweep for the South with the Carolinas leading the pack. Interestingly, Texas failed to break the "most courteous" Top 5 . . . Mama would not be proud.
Here are the swearing results:
The "goody two shoes"
- Washington
- Massachusetts
- Arizona
- TEXAS
- Virginia
The "sailors"
- Ohio
- Maryland
- New Jersey
- Louisiana
- Illinois
Marchex monitored 600,000 customer service phone calls to chart swearing and courtesy across the nation.
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Photo by Leonid Furmansky
