DONALD
ROSS
210L Lind Hall, (612) 625-5585
rossj001@tc.umn.edu
Department of English, University of Minnesota
"A Brief Note on How Writing Errors are Judged," Journal of
Technical Writing and Communication, 11 (1981), 163-73.
A brief business letter was written, then ten versions were made
up-each having from four to twenty-nine errors systematically
introduced. Three hundred students read one version of the letter,
then answered questions about the letter's contents and judged the
"author" (is he intelligent, a good writer, etc.). The results
pointed to misspellings as the most often noticed class of errors.
Readers judged the author most harshly when spelling errors were
present, but did not reach the same conclusion in the face of errors
of syntax or punctuation. Finally people labeled all classes of
errors "misspelling" and did not identify syntactic problems.
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Last revised 15 November 1999
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