Well gosh darn it, turns out we're a bunch of potty mouths here in Illinois, thank you very much.
That's the finding from the Marchex Institute, a data analysis firm, which ranks Illinois as the 5th worst cursing state in the country, though acknowledges that we're pretty liberal with our "pleases" and "thank yous."
Just in time for National Etiquette Week, Marchex released findings on the most courteous and the least courteous states in the nation.
The Institute examined more than 600,000 phone calls from the past 12 months. You know, the calls that "may be recorded for training purposes."
The calls were placed by consumers to businesses across 30 industries, including cable and satellite companies, auto dealerships, pest control centers and more, says Marchex.
The Institute scanned for curse words from A to F to S (use your imagination). Analysts then linked the frequency of those words with all 50 states.
In the “Sailors” category — states where people are most likely to curse — were: Ohio (first place) Maryland (second place), New Jersey (third place), Louisiana (fourth place), Illinois (fifth place).
Washington state led the list of states where people are least likely to curse, followed by Massachusetts (second place), Arizona (third place), Texas (fourth place), Virginia (fifth place).
Illinois ranked in the "usually courteous" category when it comes to saying please and thank you.
The data also found that:
- two-thirds of curses come from men
- the calls that contain the most cursing are longer than 10 minutes. So the longer someone is on the phone, the more likely that call is to devolve.
- calls in the morning are twice as likely to produce cursing as calls in the afternoon or evening. (Maybe people are grumpier before their coffee kicks in.)
To read more $@#%^!!, click here.
Think Illinois is more or less profane than they say? Tell us what you think. Well, maybe clean it up a little before you tell us.