Battle of the Sexes?

Have you ever wondered whether men or women are considered better writers?  I know I didn't.  That question honestly never occurred to me.  But Grammarly recently did a survey on this very subject, and the results are intriguing.

From a pool of more than 3,000 survey participants OF BOTH GENDERS the overall consensus was that women are the better writers.  How about that?

But what does it really mean, you ask?  Well, let's break down the numbers and look at the different factors considered in the survey for a better understanding of the results.

I hope you can read that. If not, try clicking on it, and it should come up larger.  The sub-topic of this picture is Plot Development.  The question--who is likely to spend signification time developing characters, as opposed to getting the point as quickly as possible. 

55.6% of respondents said that men will get to the point faster, rather than focusing on character development.  Women, however scored 83.3% on character development.  What does this mean?  Depending on your take it either means men tend to create less developed characters or that women don't get to the point quickly enough.  Ok that's taking the negative POV but come on, it can be fun!

Next we have pronouns and determiners, which I'm sure you can see for yourself...so why did I just type that?  Don't know, but more caffeine is definitely in order.  Hold on a sec.  *elevator music* All right, I'm back.  Thanks for waiting.

The question was regarding writing about people or things.  Apparently men are 56.4% like to write about people, leaving 43.6% about things.  Women, on the other hand are 67.9% likely to write about people, and only  32.1% likely to write about things.  So women's writing tends to be more people-oriented.  I can believe that.  Mom used to tell me that women discuss relationships, and men discuss facts (though they are not always true facts). :)

The characters section of the survey was apparently a real barn-burner. Please note that no actual barns were harmed during this survey, at least not to my knowledge.

The numbers are so close, that if we include a margin of error, it

could go either way.  So men and women are both equally likely to write characters who are similar to (or different from) themselves. Interestingly both genders are rather more inclined to write characters who are similar to themselves.  Write what you know, I guess.

Now we come to sentences.  Based on this info, women are far more likely to write long, descriptive sentences than men are.  If you don't agree, I am proof.  Look how long this blog post has gotten.  If I shortened my sentences by sticking to the facts, and only the facts, we'd be done already.  But what fun would that be?

This part is a summary of the above.  It's basically reinforcing the part where it says overall 59% of all respondents said that women are better writers than men.  Since I cut up their infographic, I figured the least I could do was include this.

There you have the basic facts.  Now for my analysis.  Factually there's nothing to argue.  The respondents to this survey seem to feel that women are better writers than men.  Granted it's a small margin of victory.  Clearly the other 41% feel that men are better writers than women.  And that's ok.  That's one of the great things about being a reader--there is truly something for every taste.