Swear words on Twitter

In daily life it is thought that between 0.5% and 0.7% of the words we use are swearwords, but the proportion on the site is roughly twice this, at 1.15%. According to this study, about one in every 13 tweets contains a swearword of some kind.

Intriguingly, swearing also seems to be an early-week thing. Tweets become more and more likely to contain a swearword as the day progresses, perhaps reflecting the accumulation of things we have to swear about, and peak profanity is reached between midnight and 1.30am, suggesting that people who are awake at that time are, let’s say, the least inhibited. Yet Friday, Saturday and Sunday are consistently the least sweary days of the week.

Please note there are specific swear words (with data) at this link.  And there are lulls during lunch time.

For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.