Being a fan is all about passion, devotion, and face paint. It should come as no surprise, then, that when the Wall Street Journal and Grammarly teamed up to analyze sports’ fans spelling, grammar, and punctuation usage, they found… mistakes.
For the (informal, unscientific) study, grammarians looked at the top 150 comments on each Major League Baseball team’s official website, reviewing them for any errors in grammar or usage. Some teams’ fans turned out to be quite precise: Fans of the Cleveland Indians made just 3.6 mistakes per 100 words, making them the most SNOOTy group of fans in the MLB. On the other hand, New York Mets fans made 13.9 mistakes per 100 words. Ouch.
Orioles fans were not the worst of the worst–thanks, Mets fans!–but results indicate that we could maybe use some remedial grammar classes. Orioles fans made 9.9 mistakes out of every 100 words — that’s a nearly 10% grammar fail rate — making us the 9th-worst team (out of 30).
