Most office romances start with a virtual kiss - putting a simple ‘X’ by a flirting colleague at the end of an SMS, a new study has found.
However, in many cases, the kisses used in electronic communications are misconstrued.
Both men and women wrongly assume that a message ending in an X is a come-on – when, in fact, a work colleague is merely being friendly, the Daily Mail reported.
The study provides a valuable insight into dating etiquette in the electronic age and how ‘X’s are being used to instigate sex.
A dating website polled 1,000 British members on the significance of ‘X’s in emails.
An over-friendly 40 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men put ‘X’s in emails to their boss, while 86 per cent say they mark mails to ordinary colleagues with a kiss.
The study discovered that 35 per cent of women and a quarter of men said that they had sent messages bearing kisses which had been wrongly seen as sexual by the recipient.
Researchers found that 55 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men who had an affair at work admitted it had been initially sparked by ‘X’s in messages.
The results showed that 90 per cent of women and 85 per cent of men said that if they received a message with an ‘X’ on it before a first date, then the possibility of intimacy increases.
As many as 82 per cent of women and 70 per cent of men said more ‘X’s on texts or emails showed a greater level of flirtation.
The study by WhatsYourPrice also found that electronic kiss is an effective means of spicing up a first date as the possibility of intimacy sky rockets almost 90 per cent if an SMS with the powerful ‘X’ is sent immediately before the get-together.