What makes a Reddit post get upvoted? What the research shows (2026)
By the Content Desk team · Updated
Key takeaways
- Concrete wording is the best-supported effect: in a 2025 study, posts built from concrete, picturable words were shared more on Twitter and upvoted more on Reddit overall, and an experiment showed concreteness caused the preference.
- On Reddit it depends on the community: concreteness helped in 6 of 29 subreddits studied and hurt in 6, including r/LifeProTips and r/todayilearned.
- Positive, upbeat wording predicted fewer upvotes on Reddit (but more retweets on Twitter); jokey words predicted less sharing on both.
- Each community's format matters more than any word choice: every one of the year's 25 biggest posts in r/todayilearned starts "TIL", and every one in r/LifeProTips starts "LPT".
The study: concrete wording causes more sharing
Hu, Pilgrim, Zhao and Hills (2025, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology) measured how concrete the wording of posts was, using ratings people gave to about 40,000 English words: "keyboard" scores near the top, "privacy" near the bottom.
- 15.6 million tweets (February 2020 to January 2021): more concrete tweets were retweeted more, and the effect held within topics.
- 50,517 Reddit text posts from the front page and 15 large default subreddits, over about ten days: more concrete posts got more upvotes overall.
- An experiment with 167 university students choosing which of two versions of real Reddit posts to share: the more concrete version won, and the bigger the gap, the stronger the preference. That's what makes concreteness a cause, not just a correlation.
Where it doesn't hold
On Reddit the effect wasn't universal. Concreteness helped in 6 of the 29 subreddits studied and hurt in 6, including r/LifeProTips and r/todayilearned; in the rest it made no measurable difference. The studies also couldn't account for who posted, when, or with what image, and those often matter more than wording.
The other signals
- Arousal (words with energy) predicted more sharing in all three studies. Real stakes count; hype doesn't. When we rated ad copy the same way, words like "excited" and "amazing" made it score as high as real top posts.
- Positive wording predicted more retweets on Twitter but fewer upvotes on Reddit.
- Jokey wording predicted less sharing on both platforms.
What the year's top posts have in common
We read the 25 most upvoted posts of the past year in 64 subreddits. The patterns are mostly about each community's format:
| Community | What its top posts look like |
|---|---|
| r/todayilearned | All 25 titles start "TIL", average 42 words, 72% contain a number; link posts to a source |
| r/LifeProTips | All start "LPT"; 80% have a text body, median 127 words, 85% first person |
| r/AskReddit | All are a question in the title, about 19 words, no body; top comments run about 9 words |
| r/explainlikeimfive | All start "ELI5"; top answers run about 60 words |
| r/Entrepreneur | 96% text posts, median 220 words, 88% first person |
| r/SideProject | Visual demos (screenshots, screen recordings) with an "I built" or "[Name] - description" title |
A checklist before you post
- Follow the community's format and rules first. A great post that breaks them is removed.
- Name concrete things: the device, the place, the number, the moment it broke.
- Use real stakes ("the deadline", "it crashed", "the interview") instead of hype ("amazing", "game-changer").
- Skip default jokes and upbeat marketing tone, especially on Reddit.
- Make the title open a specific question the post answers.
- Don't expect wording to beat timing, a good image, or an engaged community.
How we tested this on real posts
Our post scorer weighs concreteness most because it's the only effect with causal evidence. Scored on title alone, the real top titles of the year averaged 3.2 out of 5 and generic ad-style titles 2.1, on the communities we tuned against and on 475 titles from 29 others. Inside a single community's top 25, scores didn't predict which post got more upvotes, so use any score as a filter for weak drafts, not a ranking of good ones.
Sources
- Hu, Pilgrim, Zhao & Hills (2025). Concrete language enhances sharing of social media posts on Twitter, Reddit, and experimentally. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 79(5), 1083–1093. doi:10.1177/17470218251392831
- Brysbaert, Warriner & Kuperman (2014). Concreteness ratings for 40 thousand generally known English word lemmas. Behavior Research Methods.
- Warriner, Kuperman & Brysbaert (2013). Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods.
More detail on the research: the research behind the scorer.
How we checked
On 6 November 2026 we read 64 subreddits through Reddit's own developer platform: each sidebar, the 25 most upvoted posts of the past year in full, and the top comments on each sub's five biggest posts. Six more came from an earlier pass that read sidebars only, for 70 in all. Reddit didn't let us read each community's separate Rules tab, so where a sidebar was empty we say so, and the guide for that sub tells you to check the Rules tab before posting. Rules change; treat dates as part of the answer.
Questions people ask
What gets the most upvotes on Reddit?
Posts that follow the community's format and use concrete, specific wording. A 2025 study found concrete wording increased sharing, but on Reddit the effect varied by community, and format rules (like "TIL" or "LPT" titles) decide whether a post stays up at all.
Should a Reddit title be a question?
It depends on the community. All 25 of the year's biggest posts in r/AskReddit and r/NoStupidQuestions have question titles; none of the biggest in r/todayilearned, r/Showerthoughts or r/dataisbeautiful do.
How long should a Reddit post be?
It varies by community. Among the year's top posts, median bodies run about 59 words in r/explainlikeimfive, 127 in r/LifeProTips, and 220 to 270 in r/Entrepreneur and r/smallbusiness.
Do positive words help a Reddit post?
Not on Reddit. In the 2025 study, positive wording predicted fewer upvotes on Reddit, even though it predicted more retweets on Twitter. Upbeat marketing language reads as an ad.
Draft posts that follow each community's rules, scored before you post them.
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