Seems the most commonly tweeted word is (hold the drum roll) “the.”

And because Twitter thrives on users talking about themselves, the second most commonly tweeted word is “I.” Interestingly, “I” ranks tenth in regular written communication.

Oxford University Press also found gerunds are heavily utilized by the Twitter crowd – among the most popular words are “going,” “getting” and “watching.” Tech terms such as “Google,” “Facebook,” “blog” and “Mac” also rank high with users.

Here’s more of what came from monitoring 1.5 million random tweets. There were:

• 2,098,630 total sentences
• 22,431,033 total words
• close to 15 words per tweet, and
• nearly 1.5 sentences per tweet.

And compared to formal writing, the casual lingo of Twitter includes a greater frequency of “OK” and “f***.”

So here’s the question: Is Twitter – along with instant messaging and texting – contributing to the destruction of language skills among college students?

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.