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#StarWarsDay: Who has more word nerd skills, 'Star Wars' or 'Star Trek' fans?
Don't get sad, BB-8 — even though your grammar may not be as strong as Data's. (File: The BB-8 droid from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" at D23 Expo 2015.)
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Star Wars fans are celebrating Star Wars Day — May the 4th — a play on the iconic line "May the force be with you," because there's nothing a fangirl/fanboy loves more than wordplay. The word nerds behind writing app Grammarly just released an analysis of nearly 2,000 Reddit comments from "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" supporters to see which franchise's fans have the best grammar and whether "Star Wars" fans have the skills to back up that pun.
The winner: "Star Trek" fans, though both did quite well, with "Star Trek" fans coming in at 98.2 percent accuracy and "Star Wars" fans at 94.6 percent accuracy. "Star Wars" dominates when it comes to how many fans are part of their respective online communities — and "Star Trek" fans discuss "Star Wars" 3.8 times more than "Star Trek" fans discuss "Star Wars." It's not surprising given the cultural impact of "The Force Awakens," but maybe the next "Star Trek" film and the upcoming CBS "Star Trek" digital TV show will help grow that community.
Grammarly analyzed the top 200 upvoted posts from the "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" subreddits between April 18, 2015 and April 18, 2016, analyzing the top five upvoted comments with 20 words or more from each thread, according to the company. They only counted clear mistakes, ignoring things like slang and intentional misspellings.
One of the earliest known uses of the "May the Fourth" pun was in a 1979 interview with author Alan Arnold about the making of "The Empire Strikes Back," according to StarWars.com:
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"Margaret Thatcher has won the election and become Britain’s first woman prime minister," Arnold wrote. "To celebrate their victory her party took a half page of advertising space in the London Evening News. This message, referring to the day of victory, was ‘May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations,’ further proof of the extent to which Star Wars has influenced us all."
"As far as recent movies go, 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' definitely drummed up more buzz and love than 'Star Trek: Into Darkness.' But time will tell — 'Star Trek: Beyond' is still on the horizon," Hoover wrote.
See more insights from the analysis in the graphic below:
This story has been updated.
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