She gave you her digits and you’re going to ramp up the flirting a bit and lay a little texting game on her. So you hit her with: “R U up? Holla at me i got 2 tix to concert 2nite & im intervwng possibull dates” Then you sit back and wait for her to beg you to take her to the show.
You might be waiting a while. According to the new ‘Digital Flirting Rules’ survey by Omlet (a chat app that makes digital flirting and dating more fun), it could get you dropped from her contacts completely. Omlet interviewed 1,000 adults and young people, and 73% of the women told them “funky or very informal spelling” is their biggest turnoff when getting chat or text messages from guys.
That’s nearly three-quarters of the female population who will roll their eyes and hit delete when they receive a text like that. Another 59% said they disapproved of “lack of punctuation and grammar” in texts, while “excessive use of slang” makes more than half (54%) rethink whether to continue to “holla” back at you or not.
Related: Book Gets You Laid with a Salmon Steak
Rounding out women’s top 5 texting pet peeves are: Sending them messages during “sleeping hours” (from 11pm to 7am), which got the thumbs down from 51%, and “using all lowercase words,” a no-no according to exactly half the female respondents.
So you might want to dig deep, back to your high school English class for a minute, and give that text a quick scan for funky spelling or grammar, and throw in some punctuation before you hit send. Sure it takes some extra time when typing, but if it means the difference between her flirting back, and completely ignoring you, it’s time well spent.
The good news is, this doesn’t mean you can’t be creative or fun. The survey also found 38% of women actually prefer when guys send them messages with emoticons and emoji. So you can keep the smileys and winks coming. Just don’t type like you’re a sugared up 12-year-old who just binge-watched The Wire.
