Sorry to bother you, but there's something you should know: the notion that Canadians are more polite than Americans is true, at least when it comes to Twitter.
A study conducted by two Ph.D candidates at McMaster University has found that tweets from Canada are generally more positive than tweets originating in the United States, based on the types of words used in those messages.
The study geo-tagged tweets by location and then sorted their individual words into "word clouds," or collections of words based on how often they are used. The most commonly-used words are displayed in larger text near the middle of the cloud, with less popular words around the edges.
Based on the study's word clouds, the top words in Canada include "favourite," "amazing" and "great." Less popular but still common words included terms like "beautiful," "praise," "sweet," "gorgeous" and "sexy." There are no swear words or questionable terms in Canada’s word cloud, and the most negative entry is arguably the word "exams."
The U.S. word cloud was almost the complete opposite of Canada’s, rife with swear words, racial epithets and slang – with a four-letter "S" word and an offensive "N" word at its centre. The only positive words to appear in the list were "favorite" and several forms of the word "yeah." Less popular words in the cloud included mildly negative terms like "tired," "annoying," "bored," "dumb" and "sleepy."
