Washington DC, Dec 25 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Seattle topped the list of the most literate cities in America. Out of a total of 75 cities, Washington DC came in second.

Seattle was tied for the first place with Minneapolis in 2008 and came in second after the Minnesota city in 2007. And this year Seattle wrestled the top spot and Minneapolis came in as third.

This study of America’s most literate cities is by Dr. Jack Miller of Central Connecticut State University, and it ranks cities based on a number of criteria across six categories, including the number of retail bookstores per 10,000 population, the percentage of adult population with a high school diploma or higher, the number of Web page views per capita to a city’s Internet version of a newspaper and the total weekday circulation of a city’s newspapers.

These criteria, according to the study, provide a measurement of the extent to which people in a given city use their literacy. However the catch is that all the cities don’t qualify for the study, as only those cities are included which have population of 250,000 or more.

Top 10 most literate cities of 2009:

1) Seattle
2) Washington, DC
3) Minneapolis
4) Pittsburgh
5) Atlanta
6) Portland, Ore.
7) St. Paul, Minn.
8) Boston
9) Cincinnati
10) Denver