Most Americans frequently write text messages and emails, but few say they often — or ever — write fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, a new YouGov survey finds.
Texting is ubiquitous: 74% of Americans say they write text messages daily while another 16% write texts weekly. Only 2% say they never text. 67% of Americans write emails at least weekly and only 3% say they never email. 64% of Americans write both emails and texts at least weekly.
Other forms of writing are much less common. 50% of Americans say they at least occasionally — rarely or more often — write work documents, such as memos or presentations, while 47% never write these. And majorities of Americans said they never do other types of writing, including journal entries, nonfiction, fiction, papers for classes, and poetry or songs.
Adults under 30 are more likely than older Americans to say they do most forms of writing. 54% of adults under 30 say they write nonfiction, such as essays or articles, while only 22% of those 65 and older say this. 52% of young adults write fiction, and 51% write journal entries, compared to 20% and 34% of those 65 and older, respectively.
Overall, 24% of Americans say they are good writers, while 47% say they're somewhat good at writing, 18% say they're not very good, and 5% say that they're not at all good. Adults under 30 and Americans without college degrees are less likely to describe themselves as very good writers than are older Americans or those with college degrees.
Few Americans regularly use dashes or colons
Most Americans say they very often use periods (72%) and capital letters (64%) in their writing. Less than 10% of Americans say they rarely use each of these.
But other forms of punctuation are less common. 55% of Americans say they very often use commas, while 39% say that of question marks, 27% of quotation marks, 19% of parentheses, and 11% of semicolons.
Americans who say they're very good writers are much more likely to say they often use rarer kinds of punctuation. For example, 41% of Americans say they use dashes at least somewhat often, including 54% of self-described very good writers and only 21% of those who say they're not very good or not at all good at writing.
Self-described good writers also stand out for their use for writing both of computers and of paper and pen or pencil to write. While writers of all skills are about equally likely to write on smartphones, 64% of very good writers say they frequently write on computers, compared to 33% of those who are not very good or not at all good at writing. 52% of very good writers and 35% of not good writers frequently write with pen or pencil and paper.
A majority of Americans never use AI to write
A majority (60%) of Americans say they never use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help them write. This doesn't vary much by self-described writing ability, but there are big gaps by age. 76% of Americans 65 and older never use AI to write, compared to 43% of adults under 30. 18% of adults under 30 say they use AI to write on at least a weekly basis.
Americans who do use AI to help write are most likely to say they use it to generate ideas (50%), to revise specific sentences or phrases (48%), and to do research (47%), among seven possible uses asked about. About one-third of AI users use it to write parts of documents or messages (35%) and a similar proportion (33%) use it to revise entire documents. Writing entire documents is much rarer: 18% of AI users say they will use AI to write entire documents that they then edit, while 8% say they use AI to write documents they send unedited.
Americans who use AI more often for writing are more likely to say they use AI for each purpose the survey asked about. 35% of frequent AI users for writing say they use AI to write entire documents that they edit and send, compared to only 10% of occasional AI users.
Only 8% of Americans say they are very good at detecting whether something was written by an AI tool, as opposed to by a human. 32% say they can do this somewhat well. The 39% of Americans who say they can detect AI writing at least somewhat well is about equal to the 41% who say they can't do this very well.
Methodology: The poll was conducted August 27 - 29, 2025 among 1,147 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of U.S. adult citizens. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty (Maria Korneeva)
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