Does grammar matter in your online dating profile? YES! I don’t know what’s going on lately, but I keep encountering profiles that would make any decent English teacher squirm. Poor grammar, misspellings, and general linguistic mangling are infiltrating both written profiles and verbal speech. I’m somewhat of a grammar nerd, but I know that poorly-written prose is a huge turn-off to more people than just me. In fact, a quick Google search yields dozens of articles on the topic, some of which quantify the decreased rates of response received by poorly-written profiles. And I’m not talking about a misplaced modifier or a preposition at the end of a sentence (although some of us may consider such egregiousness unforgivable)! I’m referring to those profiles that look like they were written by an overzealous 12-year-old girl who is texting her BFF!!! Or even worse, those that somehow managed to evade spell check and all junior high language classes. Is your profile in less-than-pristine condition? Don’t despair. Ask Tamar for content help, and contact me for editorial assistance – I will happily proofread your profile! Here’s a brief primer to remind you of some common grammatical or usage problems.

1. Capitalization

PLEASE DON’T YELL! Typing in all capital letters looks aggressive and angry. Don’t do it unless you’re making some kind of point. Similarly, don’t use all lowercase letters. Remember to capitalize the first letter of new sentences as well as names and places.

2. Sentence Structure

Have you ever come across a profile that says something like, “I like to travel. I like dogs. I also like pizza. I have a big family.” Never mind that this profile is generic – but it would come alive with some varied sentence structures, like “Having grown up with 5 siblings,…” or “New York is my favorite place to visit…” or “Pizza drives my daily ambition to finish work by noon…” etc.

3. Abbrevs

Using abbreviations in place of actual words looks either lazy or like you’re trying to be cool. Or maybe cool’s not the right word here. But neither situation is ideal. No need for AIM speak (hey, wut r u up to? Do u like me?) or your generational equivalent of popular social communication forms (telegram? Snapchat?).  Similarly, don’t assume everyone knows the same acronyms. When it doubt, write it out!

4. Punctuation

This is a big one. If you aren’t sure of a punctuation mark’s correct usage, avoid it. In other words, don’t randomly add semicolons to look smart or throw in quotation marks unnecessarily (My name is “Caryn.”) For some reason, people like quotes, but if used improperly, the text looks suspicious, like, my name might be Caryn.

5. Spelling

Most browsers have a built-in spell check, meaning that typos are clearly denoted by a squiggly red line. So no excuse here. I realize spell check doesn’t always catch errors like your vs. you’re, but human eyes do, so proofread! Or send to me or a friend to review.

Is writing not your strong suit? Or maybe English isn’t your first language? Not to worry – you can still craft an eloquent, enticing, error-free profile. Elicit the help of a friend or even read the text out loud to yourself to check for typos. People online don’t know you, so to the internet world, a sloppy profile = a sloppy person. Luckily, it’s time for spring cleaning, so no more sloppiness!

After reading someone’s online dating profile and feeling enough of a burst of interest to meet them in person, you may find yourself on the steady track of getting to know them and seeing them weekly. But when is it time to finally connect with them, or easier said, be their Facebook friend, perhaps follow them on Twitter and begin to press the “heart” button on their Instagram photos?

Do: Wait to meet the person in real life before connecting with them across all or any social media platforms. If you’re able to figure out their first and last name before meeting them or after the first date, it’s fine to go ahead and innocently explore their profiles but don’t add them.

Don’t: Add that person on Facebook in the middle of your first date or before you have actually been out with them. If they ask you, before meeting you, to be your Facebook friend, consider going against that. It’s never a good idea to have someone look through years of your online information and photos before meeting you. Let the majority of their first impression of you be made in person, if possible.

Read more of Jen Glantz: www.thethingsilearnedfrom.com

Nothing about online dating matters once you meet a person in real life. You could have the best-looking pictures, and the funniest profile. You could be the best online-conversationalist, but if you don’t know how to interact with people in real life, it doesn’t matter. You know who else is good at chatting online? Child predators.

My new theory based on absolutely no research, facts or observation, states that the worse the person’s online persona, the better they are in real life. Good people don’t spend too much time cultivating their profile. They spend time out in the world while their mother who is desperate for her son to marry because he’s 35 and still single, sets up his profile for him. He doesn’t care. He’s too cool to worry about his most flattering photos, and his profile that is just self-deprecating enough to seem cute, but just confident enough to seem secure.

Back in the 50’s, when 100hookup® consisted of a man at a typewriter staring out of his window with a telescope, life was so much easier. You would just walk up to a stranger’s home in the middle of the night to look for a quality guy. Now, you have to sift through hundreds of profiles to find that right balance between creepy and desperate. Chivalry is dead.

Go out there. Purposefully find the ugliest, stupidest profiles. Go for that shirtless guy taking a picture in his bathroom with an iPhone. Go for the dude who, under, ‘I’m looking for…’, wrote simply, ‘no fatties’. Once you do meet this man in the real world, you will marry him, or file a restraining order within the first 5 minutes. Either way, crazy story.

What do your profile pictures say about you?  If you’re smiling, I think, “Here’s a nice person who connects with me and could really like me.”  After regaining my sanity, I think, “Here’s a total stranger grinning into a camera lens.”

Do you want to send the message that you’re unpredictable or quirky?  Try brooding and not smiling.  Although I’m liable to think I did something to offend you and I haven’t even met you yet. But that’s just me.  I even take spam personally.

Like staying on the go? Show it in a picture.  But remain still enough to take the picture, or you’ll resemble a blur.  Prefer rotting on the couch?  Photoshop yourself sitting not on the sofa but in a hot air balloon.  When they find out later you’re a couch potato, tell them the “hot air” was a message.

If you have a fun group shot with your pals, make sure each and every pal is less cute than you are.

Have a great picture with your ex?  When chopping him or her off, be sure to remove any remnant of the strange tattoos on their forearm, unless it’s to signal us it’s why you left them.

For those of you who have been reading this blog consistently, you are probably aware of a blog I wrote in which I performed a little experiment on how many messages a beautiful girl would receive.

To rehash, a beautiful friend of mine made a profile on another site, was wearing a bikini, and received over 100 messages in an hour.

After this little experiment, which didn’t surprise me at all to say the least, I decided to try another little experiment.  The same girl agreed to create another profile, only this time, she was not wearing a bikini, but was dressed much more business like, with her hair up, and less makeup.

Same beautiful girl, different looks.

The results?  Less than half of the messages in the same time frame!

This once again re-enforces the fact, men are visceral creatures!  It may seem unfair ladies, but if you want to attract men, your profile pictures have to draw them in!

Recently I did a rather interesting experiment; the results weren’t all that surprising.  We all know online dating is one of the greatest inventions to come our way, allowing us more opportunity than anyone in past generations has ever had.  But we also know that for a guy, there is a ton of competition!

So I wanted to put this theory to the test.  As a little experiment, a beautiful friend of mine and I created a profile for her on an online dating site and set out to see just how many messages she would receive.

Keep in mind that she is a very beautiful girl and she was placed in a bikini in the main picture.

Would you believe me if I said that she received over 100 messages in the first hour?  I kid you not.

And while this is an extreme example, due to a number of components, (she is very beautiful, was wearing a bikini, women are extremely visual), the results show that beautiful women are tough to attain.

This, once again, verifies why it is oh so important to learn the art of creating the perfect profile and mastering how to write messages that are funny, interesting and unique!

The other day a female friend of mine who had recently joined 100hookup asked me to take a look at her profile in order to potentially identify any areas that she could change or improve. While I am far from an authority on what people should put in their profile I did agree to take a look at hers since I have a pretty good idea of what the average male is looking for when he reads through a woman’s profile. Unfortunately, the problem I encountered during this process was that I already think my friend is great and know pretty much everything about her, which ultimately caused me to read through her profile with rose colored glasses on.

However just because I wasn’t able to give a particularly helpful assessment of my friend’s profile doesn’t mean that having someone with a different perspective read over your profile isn’t a good idea. I honestly believe, whether it is a person of the opposite sex or not, that having someone who doesn’t know you, or at least doesn’t know you that well, look over your profile is a good idea because then they can make objective suggestions for how to improve it. In the end what you choose to include in your profile is 100% up to you, and no matter what anyone else suggests it is important you only include things in your profile that you are comfortable sharing and represent you in the best possible light.

Profile pictures, I think, are virtually useless. Photos often provide security from the inherent anonymity that online conversations often entail. It is typically, for me, more comfortable to chat with somebody if I have an idea of what they look like. I don’t want to sound vain, but I have to because I am so very vain. I don’t like the insecurity of knowing that the person I’m talking to is hideous.

Despite the security that photos often provide, it is often a false sense of security. I have yet to go out on a date with somebody that looks at all like their profile photos. To remedy this, I believe that everybody on this site should submit their most unflattering photo of themselves for their profile picture. That way, there will never be disappointment. Your date will stun you every time with his/her beauty.

For example, if you are skinny, start eating foods that are terrible for you for about a month. Next, have someone take a photo of you. Post that photo as your profile picture. Then, begin a strict routine of diet and exercise for the next month. Finally, go out on a date. You have no idea how well it will go.

The other day I received an email from someone asking me for some online dating advice on a profile.   Unfortunately I was not able to help fix it due to contractual obligations with partners of mine.

However, when I offered some of the services that my company provides, the person was quick to insist that the help was not really necessary and that she just needed to take a break.  She went on to claim that she has a great profile and has spent tons of time perfecting this aspect of her dating life.

Before going any further, it wasn’t a money thing.  When we got into deep conversation, all the self defense mechanisms came out through her writing and she clearly wanted to believe she needed no help.

Without sounding too mean and judgmental, the messages that were written, although extremely courteous and nice,  were full of things that would completely turn almost any guy off.  In addition, she asked for help with her profile theninsisted it was actually really good because she had worked so hard on it. She then went on to change her mind saying she just needed a break because she has spent years online dating.

This is what I call a classic case of denial.  This girl was nice, and had plenty of potential to find an amazing guy.  But she clearly needed help, then wrote off the need for this help when it came crunch time to accepting that help.

We all need a little help sometimes. We are too blind to our own faults.  It is only human nature to protect our own self esteem.   Heck, I was online dating for years before I figured things out.  My advice to anyone struggling out there is to never live in denial.  Get the help you need rather than wasting month after month with no success and tons of frustration.

My hope to this day is that this woman does eventually get the help she was originally looking for, because she was truly a sweet girl.

In my last blog entry I discussed the importance of creating a great online dating profile if you are a male.  While writing these may not be fun, it is extremely important to women and can make or break you.

But this raises the question:  What exactly makes an online dating profile high quality?  There are a number of things that you can do to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

1.  Learn the art of strong language use.  Try to write things that make you appear to be a strong, confident male, and avoid weak lanuage and clingy sounding statements that so many males accidentally use.

2.  Incorperate methods that build on attraction.  Branching off the first suggestion, not only dowe want to appear strong and confident, but we want to implement qualities such as demand, value, mystery, etc. that increase attraction levels in females.

3.  Show a little humor.  Most profiles say the same thing over and over and over and over and… Okay you get the idea.  Show a little humor, especially witty, funny humor.

4.  Be conversational.  Engage the reader through your writing.

These are just a few tips I usually write about to get you started.  Good luck!