Sometimes it’s hard to find the right way of phrasing something, but for the most part our flow feels natural.

We learn the rules of grammar from an early age. And we learn them implicitly for the most part. Certainly, when I was at school, no one explained grammar formally.

What little I was taught explicitly about tenses and adverbs and the like, was gleaned in a couple of years of studying French. The challenge of which might have been slightly easier if, prior to that, I’d had a clue what, say, a past participle was: quel fromage, or do I mean dommage, or should I say il est dommage?

Even without realising it we are often making a choice to express ourselves in one particular way when another might apply equally well.

But here’s the question: do such choices matter? If the meaning is essentially the same should be concerned about the route we take?

Let me give you an example. Let’s suppose that last year Dave was hating the job he now loves. Would that convey the same meaning as ‘Dave hated the job he now loves’?

Apparently these two do not have the same impact.

Researchers explored these alternatives with positive and negative statements. They tested them using a sentence about a fictitious politician, the sort of line you might read in a newspaper or on a website around election time.

It transpired that when the imperfect tense was used, “He was taking hush money” people were more confident that he wouldn’t be re-elected and believed that he’d taken more money than when the perfect tense was used (“He took hush money”).

The researchers’ theory, and I agree with them, is that the imperfect tense gives the impression that the activity is still going on.

The way in which positive messages was perceived wasn’t altered by the grammar used.

In a second study when positive and negative statements were combined (“… removing homes and extended roads”) 40% of people thought he would be re-elected. When the tense was switched (“…removed homes and extending roads”) 56% of people thought the politician would be re-elected.

This research suggests that where you have the opportunity to express information in different ways, particularly when it is referencing something negative, there is something to be gained from considering carefully what phrasing you choose to use.

With websites it’s certainly worth testing alternative phraseology and evaluating what impact it has (if any) on conversion.

And this research adds yet another complexity when asking consumers questions. Especially with opinion polls, where specific issues are often described before respondents provide their views: the complexity and degree of abstraction of such descriptions have already been shown to influence response. Now we have evidence that the choice of grammar may also exert an effect.

Source: Fausey, C., and Matlock, T. (2011). Can Grammar Win Elections? Political Psychology, 32 (4), 563-574 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00802.x

Image courtesy: Vee