[May 21, 2013] EDITORIAL: Business comes calling to state, and expletives are deleted Tweet May 21, 2013 (Yakima Herald-Republic - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- The heck you say: There may be something to "Northwest Nice" after all. A recent study found that when it comes to refraining from obscene utterances, Washington state residents are No. 1 in the country. This is news to any state resident who overhears dialogue in a public locker room, in a shopping mall, at a rock concert, in a comedy club or from the neighbor trying to start his lawn mower. So ... let's discuss the cuss. A Seattle-based mobile-advertising firm named Marchex conducted the survey. Hmmm, a state firm rates its home state tops -- Gallup methodology it's not, but then Gallup didn't always get it right in last year's presidential polling. Marchex gathered data from recorded telephone calls between customers and businesses across the country, employing speech-recognition called "call mining." Marchex scanned for nice words like "please" and "thank you" -- and for their more vulgar antonyms -- bringing a new twist to: "Your call is being monitored for quality ... of your vocabulary." To that end, Washington residents had the highest quality -- or least lowest quality. Only one out of 301 Washingtonians cut loose with a curse, a rate 50 percent below the national average. We can only assume that the calls contained no references to political parties, Huskies/Cougars, flaky springtime weather or David Stern, the NBA commissioner who last week again stomped on the hearts of this state's basketball fans and, in the process, exhausted their capacity for expletives. Washington rates far ahead of second-place Massachusetts, which apparently forms a beachhead for Northeast Nice -- go figure. But there is consistency here; the Bay State once elected a governor named Mitt Romney, who occasionally slipped and uttered a "golly" when campaigning for president last year. Others in the top five are Arizona, a repository for Midwesterners whose vocabulary is no doubt soothed by a dearth of ice and snow; and Texas and Virginia, both states where youngsters still are brought up to say "please" and "thank you." Washington, by the way, ranked in the upper third for use of those niceties, perhaps reflecting migration of enough Southerners to move us up a notch or two. Cursing at twice the rate of Washington are residents of Ohio, a state that Northwesterners view as a Rust Belt relic, but that assumption is too easy and the judgment is too hard. We'll be generous and point out that Ohio is the quintessential political swing state, whose voters were subjected to a barrage of campaign advertising during last year's presidential election. That would make anybody cranky. Other revelations: Two-thirds of the curses came from men, and morning calls are twice as likely to elicit expletives as calls in the afternoon and evening. And they spent how much on this survey Now. we here in Washington have a reputation to uphold. Future business transactions will come with the expectation that our state's customers will maintain their decorum and refrain from uttering the scatological and salacious. When a company representative calls, we now need to employ courtesy, thus adding a new definition to a business-friendly state. Could we manage that, please Thank you. -- Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Sharon J. Prill, Bob Crider, Frank Purdy and Karen Troianello. ___ (c)2013 Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.) Visit Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.) at www.yakima-herald.com Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]