Californians Swear Like Sailors, Study Says

Californians swear like sailors – but in a polite way.

So says the Marchex Institute, a data analysis firm that studied more than 600,000 phone calls nationwide over the past 12 months.

Just in time for National Etiquette Week, Marchex released a report on calls that "may be recorded for training purposes" to businesses across 30 industries, including cable and satellite companies, auto dealerships and pest control centers.

The Institute scanned for curse words from A to F to S (use your imagination), then linked the frequency of those words with all 50 states.

On the swearing scale, California was one of 15 states in the "Sailors" category. But it also landed on the top 15 "most courteous" list, states where residents were most likely to say "please" and "thank you."

The most foul-mouthed state was Ohio, followed by Maryland, New Jersey, Louisiana and Illinois. The cleanest language came from Washington, Massachusetts, Arizona, Texas and Virginia.

On the please-and-thank-you meter, Southern hospitality dominated. The most polite states were South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, Louisiana, and Georgia. The least polite were Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio.

(Specific rankings beyond the top and bottom five weren't released for either category.)

Other findings:

• Two-thirds of curses came from men
• The calls that contained the most cursing were longer than 10 minutes. So the longer someone is on the phone, the more likely the call is to devolve.
• Calls in the morning were twice as likely to produce cursing as calls in the afternoon or evening. (Maybe people are grumpier before their coffee kicks in.)