Philobiblon

One more sexual stereotype shot down by a study in Science:

…both men and women use around 16,000 words a day, according to the study by Dr Matthias Mehl from The University of Arizona and reported today…
However, there are still huge differences between individuals.
Among the three most talkative males in the study, one used 47,000 words a day while the least talkative spoke only 500.
The idea that women use more words a day arose in the book The Female Brain, which was published last year.
“These findings have been reported widely by national media and have entered the cultural mainstream,” said Prof James Pennebaker from the University of Texas, Austin, another of those who worked on the study.
“Although many people believe the stereotypes of females as talkative and males as reticent, there is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended period of time.” “