PEOPLE living in the Orkney and Shetland Islands have been named the most polite Twitter users in the UK as they use the least swear words.

A nationwide study, conducted for a BBC documentary, found that users of the social networking site on the islands refrained from bad language.

However, Scotland had five areas in the top 10 of places in the UK most likely to swear on the site. Clackmannanshire was named Scotland's most foul-mouthed placed followed by East Ayrshire, Falkirk and North Lanarkshire. North Ayrshire also featured in the UK top 10.

Scientists at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London investigated patterns of Twitter profanity by monitoring tweets sent from a smartphone with geo-location switched on, from the week beginning August 28.

The f-word was the most featured swearword in all tweets collected over the week, although it only accounted for 2.16 per cent of tweets, the study conducted for Radio 4 programme Future Proofing found.

Dr Ed Manley, the co-author of the study, said: "I think there is a cultural element to why Orkney and Shetland have the least amount of swearing.

"They are more traditional areas and it may be that swearing is just not as socially acceptable as in other areas of Scotland. More southern areas of Scotland had a much higher levels of swearing."

In Glasgow, 5.2 per cent tweets contained swear words compared to 3.8 per cent in Edinburgh. In Aberdeen the figure was 4.3 per cent.