OXFORD’S Twitter users are among the least likely to swear on the social network, according to new research.

Academics monitored all tweets sent from smartphones between August 28 and September 4.

They found that only 1.38 per cent of tweets sent from Oxford contained swearing, making it the least profane area of the mainland UK and the third-least profane overall.

Only the Shetland Islands and the Orkneys were more polite than Oxford.

Tweeters in Redcar and Cleveland in North Yorkshire were the most likely to turn the air blue, with 7.89 per cent of their messages containing foul language.

The survey, which looked at more than 1.3 million tweets, found swearing was most common on Saturday and Sunday afternoons during football matches.

People were also likely to swear on their tweets in the mornings, at lunchtimes and the end of the working day.

Researcher Dr Hannah Fry, of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London, said: “Twitter has a reputation for being really the home of angry, aggressive messages that people send each other.

“I think it says something a little more positive perhaps about how aggressive or civil we can be to one another."

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