As greeting card retailers and florists likely celebrated another February haul after the 14th, the secret to online dating success seems to have been uncovered.

In one of those ‘…bear does it where!?’ moments, it has been revealed that humour and playfulness are attractive to those looking for  relationships. This is the conclusion of researchers publishing the results of a study in healthcare tome Evidence Based Medicine.

Of course, things are a little more convoluted than that.

The boffins also found that using a screen name with a letter towards the start of the alphabet gets greater interest from prospective partners.

Naturally, there were differences between the ladies and the men.

Women, for example, are more likely to hit up someone with a name with academic overtones. Gents, meanwhile, will go for the handle that they think is most closely related to physical attractiveness.

However, it is humour within a profile that really is the big winner. That said, the tantalising text will do no good if it is not read, meaning that getting your profile seen is the key.

Being fun does need to play a big role here, with a playful name being as important as your online handle starting with an A, B or C, or your picture.

For example, ‘ArtThrob’ and ‘Fun2bwith’ will illicit greater responses than ‘John Smith’. However, one of the greatest bastions of humour, self-deprecation, is not great online.

Putting people in mind of inferiority (never hot), names such as ‘CuteLil’un’ and ‘FlyW8’ are reminiscent of striking the wrong tone with page content, or ‘that’ email you once sent by mistake.

Content writers could find themselves performing well with dating sites though. After all, a quality title and original text is what getting your content working for you is all about.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.