One in 10 Americans Believe HTML is a Sexually Transmitted Disease

If you are going to talk to an American any time soon you may do well to steer clear of using any technology terms as it could lead to all sorts of embarrassing, yet hilarious, conversations.

One in 10 Americans believe HTML – the computer scripted language to create websites - was a sexually transmitted disease, according to a study by Vouchercloud.net.

And almost a quarter of the 2,392 participants thought an MP3 was a Star Wars Robot.

In the survey, Vouchercloud.net gave three possible definitions to their questions to find out how tech-savvy users were.

A company spokeswoman said in a statement: "Technology is a huge interest for our user base, and month after month we see thousands of people visiting our site to look for coupons and deals to use when purchasing their favourite tech product.

"It seems that quite a few of us need to brush up on our tech definitions."

Here are some of the survey's amusing findings:

• 77% of respondents could not identify what SEO means. SEO stands for Search-Engine Optimisation.
• 27% identified "gigabyte" as an insect commonly found in South America. A gigabyte is a measurement unit for the storage capacity of an electronic device.
• 42% said they believed a "motherboard" was "the deck of a cruise ship." A motherboard is usually a circuit board that holds many of the key components of a computer.
• 18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos.
• 15% said they believed "software" is comfortable clothing. Software is a general term for computer programmes.
• 12% said "USB" is the acronym for a European country. In fact, USB is a type of computer connector.

Sixty one per cent of the respondents, however, said it was important to have a good up-to-date knowledge of technology in this modern age.