100 Billion Tweets Were Studied By Scientists to Find Out Why We Stretch Our Words and It Makes Sense

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So this is super weird. Like something I never even wondered about before I read about this study. Why do we stretch our words?

Scientists studied 100 billion tweets to find out why we do this. Now that I am thinking about it, it’s obvious.

We stretch our words quite often to express emotion. We just don’t really pay attention to the fact that we do it because we always have.

Like when I see or hear something that shocks me, I’m always like “Saaaay whaaaaatt?”. Another one that often comes out of my mouth is “Daaaaang”. Like Joe Dirt style even.

Duuuude, I am basically a cross between Joe Dirt and a stuck up snob when I talk. Wowwww!

When I’m feeling a little sassy and have a bit of attitude you may hear me say “Byeeee!” or “Whateverrrrr”

Scientists from the University of Vermont Burlington started collecting tweets in 2008 when they first noticed that people do this and also that it was so common.

We were doing something a bit silly and playful, and that’s part of science. You never know what you might find.

Peter Dodds, a professor in the University of Vermont’s department of mathematics and statistics

Using computers they were able to analyze about 100 billion tweets from September 2008 and December 2016. They used this information to catalog drawn-out words. They were looking for patterns on how they are used.

I usually type the way I talk in real life. Sooooo, if I am trying to express myself, my typing will reflect the way I speak…unless I need to sound professional, in that case, I fake it and am proper.

So we stretch words online the same we do when speaking. It’s helpful online because you get more of the emotion that you can not hear. Like when someone tries to give me some line about something I know isn’t true, I may respond with “Suuuuuurrre”…

Sometimes I get carried away with how long I stretch my words while typing. Apparently others do as well. They found that some words repeated letters 15-30 times! They published the results in a journal called PLOS One.

The authors of the study said this could pave the way for these words to be added to the dictionary. Ehhhhh, I don’t think it needs to go that far. They are not the proper spellings of words, so in my opinion, they don’t belong in the dictionary. It’s just expressive. What do you think?

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