Sidney Greenbaum, John Taylor, The Recognition of Usage Errors by Instructors of Freshman Composition, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 32, No. 2, Language Studies and Composing (May, 1981), pp. 169-174

A brief business letter was written, then ten versions were madeup—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 misspelling 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.

In most textbooks on technical writing, understandability of sentences is misleadingly equated with grammatical primitiveness. In actual technical writing, however, writers regularly conform to six basic rules dealing with the uses of base clauses and free modifiers, as well as punctuation. There are ten types of free modifiers, which can be used singly or in parallel or nonparallel sequences. All types are used either to add details to a key idea expressed in a base clause or to make transitions between one sentence or paragraph and another.

BECAUSE THE FRESHMAN COMPOSITION CLASS is usually the students' first introduction to college, what better place to challenge sexist reading, writing, and thinking? What better place to help students understand the relationship between language and thought? Instead of grammar-book rules that instruct students to avoid the masculine pronoun when gender is unclear, classroom activities can encourage students actively to explore their sexist values and draw their own conclusions. These activities should attack sexism at its roots by examining the cultural conditioning which both encourages faulty thinking and limits options for women and men. At the same time, through an examination of sexism, teachers can get at some of the students' persistent writing difficulties, such as generating essay topics, supporting topic sentences with sufficient proof, and selecting appropriate words and tone. Even though students have read and written for the better part of their lives, they seem unaware of the power of language to condition minds. They do not recognize that the assumption that males hold all prestigious positions lies behind the business correspondence salutation of Dear Sir. Nor can they identify the cultural bias toward single women reinforced by the titles Mr., Mrs., and Miss. If confronted directly with this sexism, many students acquiesce by using Ms. and by revising all he pronouns to read he/she. Nonetheless, they view such practices as arbitrary, senseless, and bothersome. A study of the causes and effects of sexist language can be integrated with and grow naturally from existing course structures and objectives. The three activities which follow are designed to explore the implications of sexism while building reading and writing skills. The first comprises word lists that develop awareness of sexist language used in literature and in students' own writings, while the second explores fairy tales that, like other literature, transmit sex role stereotypes and biases. The third considers research topics related to the two preceding activities. These three activities can be arranged in several sequences to develop writing objectives. For example, a teacher who views writing as a discovery process might use the following sequence: (1) students look at the data in the Hemingway passage from differing viewpoints, manipulate the data, and form tentative hypotheses; (2) students, in a

Neman's extensive revision of the first edition, (published by Merrill in 1980) takes into account the recent explosion of scholarly inquiry and research composition while remaining focused on the basic substance of pedagogy - the nurturing of the student mind. Her approach is student- centred , based on twenty-five years of classroom experience, and will both train its readers to teach writing and tactfully provide an opportunity for them to master writing skills themselves, Covers process, structure, grammar, documentation, narrative, poetry, and stylistic problems from nonstandard dialects.

of writing: the use of abbreviations, the division of compound words, some rules for spelling properly, among other things.This comprehensive book is aimed at students of technical writing and of English in two-year colleges.It is devised as a typical textbook: The margins are wide enough for notes, the terms likely to be new to students are printed in expanded boldface type and their meaning in light italics.Also printed in light italics are points the author thinks worth emphasizng.The book is easy to read: physically because the print is on non-glare paper, conceptually because it is well written and well organized, and that, after all, is the acid test of the quality of a book on composition.Superficially, nothing about the book suggests that it is a book on technical writing.One sees no charts, no graphs, no exploded views, no instructions on how to write an abstract.And yet this book is ideally suited for learning about or teach ing technical writing because technical writing, to attain its objective, must reflect the precision and discipline of thought basic to science and technology.That is the topic of this book.The manners and conventions of presentation, namely, that in technical writing one would use a table to compare or contrast pieces of apparatus of different make or vintage, that one would use a step-action chart or a flowchart to describe a process-all this, though important for the efficient transfer of information, is nevertheless somewhat peripheral to the meaning of technical writing.Students who learn about composition from

Since teacher expectations for good writing, as communicated in responses on student compositions, may influence the nature of student writing and since little is known about how teachers respond to student writing, this study was designed to investigate the responses made by intermediate level teachers to their students' writing. Responses were classified as focusing on content or form of student writing. Classification on another dimension dealt with types of response (evaluation, assessment, instruction, audience response, or moving outside the writing). Findings show that teachers responded overwhelmingly to form. Specific types of responses tended to be of two kinds: (1) evaluation, which was usually of a general nature (e.g., Well written or a mark) and (2) instruction, which usually focused on specific language structures by correcting all mechanical errors.

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Instead of just recording thoughts, printing itself can be used as a means of communicating ideas. Writer and publisher should collaborate to produce an article or a book in such a way as to make its organization and meaning more clear. `Discourse punctuation' encompasses the inclusion of an outline; underlining, both thick and thin; boldface words, phrases, and sentences; brackets or boxes around important sections; marginal markers and notes; various printing styles, type fonts and sizes; and the use of color. The intent of these effects is to increase the reader's immediate understanding and thereby to increase the speed and efficiency of reading. The author demonstrates some of these suggestions.

Writing that observes time-honored conventions of grammar is easy to read and understand. A high school text is usually an adequate reminder of these. Confidence in writing comes also from familiarity with a good, large dictionary and a style handbook; then study and practice make perfect Forty questions test your memory or your “ear” for grammar and punctuation.

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In order to correctly and concisely understand a scientific, technical English article written by Japanese specialists, the readers should understand in what areas of English grammar they are inclined to make mistakes when they write an English version. The most crucial mistakes made are usually certain aspects of English grammar. Learning the key mistakes from a Japanese specialist will also help an English teacher focus more efficiently on profitable areas of teaching.

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Phoenix area personnel managers regarded all of a selected list of topics representing different aspects of writing as important; however, physical layout was judged to be the least important relatively. The most important problems in written communication were related to organization, contents, and spelling. Physical layout, typing, and punctuation were rated as least important. Formal procedures for assessing writing skill of potential employees were regarded as only moderately important for the recent college graduate and the experienced manager. The managers suggested that writing skill (or a lack of it) as revealed in the application blank is important in the hiring process, and that the degree of such skill manifested by managers after employment is very significant in the promotion process. Writing skill is assessed during performance appraisal in some companies, and most supervisors encouraged the development of employee writing skill.

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The teaching of basic composition courses is oriented toward not only improving skills but also toward favorably affecting the student's orientation about writing; skills alone are insufficient unless one also has a predisposition toward using those skills. The recently emerging concept of writing (Daly & Miller, 1975a) appears to have a major relationship to both skill achievement and attitude toward writing. Writing apprehension is defined as a specific case of general communication apprehension one's anxiety or fear about communicating in real or imagined communication situations (Daly & Miller, 1975a). Such apprehension is said to outweigh individual projections of possible gains from the communication situation (Phillips, 1968). These apprehensions toward communicating appear to lead to a number of deleterious effects in various environments. For example, in oral communication situations, individuals who are highly apprehensive communicate less (Wells & Lashbrook, 1970), disclose less (Hamilton, 1972), and achieve less socially (McCroskey & Sheahan, 1977), academically (McCroskey & Daly, 1976; McCroskey & Andersen, 1976; Smythe & Powers, 1978), and occupationally (Daly & McCroskey, 1975), than do individuals who are low in apprehension. Furthermore, individuals who are highly apprehensive in written communication use fewer words, statements, ly words, commas, and delimiting punctuation (Daly, 1977, in press), and less intense language (Daly & Miller, 1975c), and their is rated lower in quality (Daly, 1978; Book, 1976). Book (1976) suggests further major differences in structure, language use, and amounts of information conveyed between high and low apprehensives. Composition teachers develop significantly less positive expectancies of high apprehensive students than of low apprehensive students. Occupations with low requirements are more desirable to high apprehensives than those with high requirements (Daly & Shamo, 1976). In addition, high apprehensives have lower success expectations of themselves in classes than low apprehensives, perceive themselves to have been less successful in previous oriented classes, and are less likely to take advanced courses demanding writing. (Daly & Miller, 1975b). Given such an abundance of clearly defined negative effects for the high apprehensive students, attention must be drawn toward possible allevia-

better ways for a writer to gain clarity, copiousness, and flexibility in language. To classical rhetoricians, a paraphrase was a literary exercise, a mode of literary treatment. It consisted of turning poetry into prose and prose into poetry. So far as sentence structure was concerned, poetry and prose were considered to be essentially the same. Thus a theme assignment could be given in poetry or in prose, so the paraphrase was an exercise which laid the founda-

The following treatise surveys the issues and approaches for designing a computer system capable of reading, understanding, and writing technical reports. Recent progress in computer science and artificial intelligence research is used to specify the nature of the modules in the system. The processing of a sample text is observed during the phases of reading and writing a report on the origin of sunspots. The author advances some proposals for correlating syntax and semantics of English from a procedural standpoint. The discussion is illustrated with structural diagrams.

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edge of the subject and your convenience totally govern how you prepare the report.Prepare a 'user-oriented' report, much as the engineer-designer gives prime" consideration to the users of a highway or an electric drill."Whether the letters ask for information (inquiry, request, and order) or give information (response and employment), the format is the same, and courtesy always prevails.Cus tomer relations letters (congratulatory, appreciation, com plaint, adjustment, and collection) are best begun and ended with goodwill, no matter whether the news is good or bad.In persuasive letters, the readers will stay interested when they are placed in the picture and shown how the product or the service relates to them.Pearsall and Cunningham elaborate on report writing by fo cusing on ( 1 ) how much information the readers need, (2) how best to create a picture of the mechanism in their minds, and (3) how to arrange the details.Instruction manuals, periodic reports, accident reports, trip reports, minutes of meetings, analytical reports, and proposals are explained with readeroriented reasons for the steps in their preparation.So are guidelines for how to compile a bibliography, how to review technical literature as part of the report, how to pre pare typical illustrations, how to tabulate data, how to fill out forms, and how to convert English and metric units.The ap pendix on usage summarizes points of grammar, style, punctu ation, capitalization, and spelling.Besides covering the important writing situations, the au thors explain how to act at an employment interview arid, in a long chapter, how to report technical information orally, es sentially what you would learn in two years as a member of a Toast masters Club.Every chapter has lots of examples, all on technical subjects from industry and government.The readability level varies from that of working adults to that of students fresh out of high school with little technical background.

edge of the subject and your convenience totally govern how you prepare the report.Prepare a 'user-oriented' report, much as the engineer-designer gives prime" consideration to the users of a highway or an electric drill."Whether the letters ask for information (inquiry, request, and order) or give information (response and employment), the format is the same, and courtesy always prevails.Cus tomer relations letters (congratulatory, appreciation, com plaint, adjustment, and collection) are best begun and ended with goodwill, no matter whether the news is good or bad.In persuasive letters, the readers will stay interested when they are placed in the picture and shown how the product or the service relates to them.Pearsall and Cunningham elaborate on report writing by fo cusing on ( 1 ) how much information the readers need, (2) how best to create a picture of the mechanism in their minds, and (3) how to arrange the details.Instruction manuals, periodic reports, accident reports, trip reports, minutes of meetings, analytical reports, and proposals are explained with readeroriented reasons for the steps in their preparation.So are guidelines for how to compile a bibliography, how to review technical literature as part of the report, how to pre pare typical illustrations, how to tabulate data, how to fill out forms, and how to convert English and metric units.The ap pendix on usage summarizes points of grammar, style, punctu ation, capitalization, and spelling.Besides covering the important writing situations, the au thors explain how to act at an employment interview arid, in a long chapter, how to report technical information orally, es sentially what you would learn in two years as a member of a Toast masters Club.Every chapter has lots of examples, all on technical subjects from industry and government.The readability level varies from that of working adults to that of students fresh out of high school with little technical background.

Nearly all proofreading is worthwhile, much is essential. Efficient proofreading techniques are grouped for different types of material. A style sheet simplifies work on long documents. A dictionary should always be available, the vagaries of English spelling are a major source of errors.

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The article consists of four sets of questions designed to help the author, reviewer, and editor examine the medical/scientific manuscript from four different aspects: 1) its medical/scientific contribution to its field (Gross Examination); 2) contents and coverage of topic (In-depth Examination); 3) rhetoric and punctuation (Minute Examination); and 4) the manuscript-package assembled for transmission to journal editor (Components of the Manuscript). When such examinations are used one at the time as needed, they will help individuals to separate content from mechanics of presentation and to distinguish scientific evidence from erroneous speculation. They will also help authors, reviewers, and editors to judge objectively the scientific worthiness of the paper, to improve the literary presentation, and to elevate the quality of effective medical/scientific communications.

Use of the word multimedia is discussed in terms of cultural history, English grammar, classical rhetoric, communication technology, and recent articles by audiovisualists. Against this background, adjectival usage is seen as traditional, and nominative usage is shown to be justified by precedent and specialist practice, although not yet widely conven- tional. The following definitions are offered for general acceptance: multimedia (adjective)—involving several media; referring to any mixture of communication media, including mediated lectures, TV, film, drama, collages, and slide/tape programs multimedia (noun)—multiple-projection presentations reinforced by sound, and methods or equipment used to make such presentations; a method of communication which uses multi-image techniques combining static and moving projections with live or reproduced sound.

IN The Bald Soprano Ionesco satirizes the grammar samples he studied while learning English, and many of us still remember some absurdly useless fragment, like How old is your aunt?, from a freshman foreign language class. But what about our own composition textbooks and tests? Humor, and opportunities to smile and share that pleasure with students, are welcome. But when I consider one of the findings of the second round of reading tests (1974-5) by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which demonstrated a decline in students' ability to detect irony, I wonder whether some of our grammar samples may not be suggesting unsuitable messages, to say the least, to students who are disposed, or decide, to read them literally. Such a discomfiting possibility occurred to me recently when a group of freshman composition students balked at doing this sentence combining exercise:

Now if there is anyone in this piece of writing who desires something dearly, it is surely the student writer, who is reaching for poetry and, for all his clumsiness, nearly succeeding. In the years since I first read this paper, the term has become for me and my friends synonymous with a certain kind of student error: the strained metaphor, odd juxtaposition, or honest misconception which inadvertently reveals a fresh perspective on the matter at hand. I will try to demonstrate that the true tasty fruit possesses its own inner logic, that it is a sure sign of a capacity for creative and structured thought, and that this potential is worth cultivating. Mina Shaughnessy begins her ground-breaking book, Errors and Expectations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) by observing that the freshmen in her basic writing class made mistakes in grammar and syntax because no one [had seen] the intelligence of their mistakes or thought to harness that intelligence in the service of learning (p. 5). What I propose is that Shaughnessy's perception applies equally to the errors in tone and diction made by students when writing about literature. In general, tasty fruits are borne in greatest profusion by the papers of students who are bright but not adept at standard English or the standard methods of literary criticism. It was an open-enrollment student who produced the following observation on religion in America:

Readability of professional technical material was assessed by scientists and engineers. Less than 33 percent proved `easy' to read and understand. Further investigation showed that sentence structure had the greatest effect on readability.

I AM A MIDDLE-AGED SPECIMEN of the human race, one who has been raised in the United States with English as my native tongue, and yet, even given the benefit of a university education and years of practical experience using English, I am prone to err in my use of English. Why? But why ask such a question: for is it human to err? Yes, and if the errors are distributed more or less at random, there would be no need for further inquiry: on the other hand, if a particular error is repeated habitually, then it may be possible to adduce a causal mechanism. This I shall attempt to do for the error of the infinitive. The infinitive is a peculiar kind of error, for those who frequently defend their practice, and in defense point with glee to splits committed by wellknown writers. In many cases the cited author may be dead, and it may be impossible to query the author as to whether he regarded that as an error or not. In one instance, Sheridan Baker, as recounted in The Complete Stylist and Handbook (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), responded to exactly that kind of citation by a student and queried Walter Lippmann as to whether a given was justified in his mind (p. 213). The response was that the was a slip which had escaped detection. But is a really an error? Yes, if we accept the proscriptive rule that one should an infinitive. Now, however, I can ask a different question, which, I hope, will get at the heart of the matter. Why has the proscriptive rule, as taught to each student, induced in the mind of every student a transformation rule such that infinitives regularly are avoided? That is, one studies grammar in school so as to acquire patterns of speech and habits of thought that will result in the generation of acceptable English. It is my contention that the rule not to split is insufficient, by itself, to induce in the mind of every student a generative grammar such that only unsplit infinitives are produced. Some, of course, may learn to avoid infinitives, but others do not. And for those whose internal generative grammar does include a mechanism that generates, automatically, unsplit infinitives, the proscription always will require what seems to them an unnecessary after-the-fact patch. The splitters, therefore, defend their behavior because, to them, it seems natural to split. To or to split, that is the problem: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the generation of infinitives outrageously split, or to invent new rules of grammar, and by promulgating end them. But what new rule of grammar could be likely, in union with the existing rules of grammar, to induce in the mind of the

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Black town, beige woods, green frozen creek, All now, this moment, stilled, Our steeple clock Transfixed, the mineral twigs Intact, this park's arterial loss Suspended, do rebuke me, Gone amiss In minute thefts to break My bond, who set my face, my sticks, My springs against a thief, Time on my crux To nail: my thirty-three Deliquesce, so sly, I might now wink My hand, bone, lymph away: Not all my ink Keeps to my word or want, Arrests the sun, resurrects the tree, Or translates out of my water So little wine: All miracles not done.

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Professional technical communicators need to be “engineers plus.” In the United Kingdom, the plus is added in short courses after full engineering education. Developing the plus requires more than just training in grammar, graphics, and layout; it calls for programs which will develop the personal attributes communicators need in order to cope with the constraints with which they have to work.

Perhaps with tongue in cheek, the author gives sound advice on how to avoid some of the pitfalls of style, punctuation, and grammar. He suggests that the principles he gives will result in clearer and simpler writing.

The author's preface states that A Communicative Grammar of English is intended primarily for the “advanced overseas student” who has learned English as a second language, but many professional communicators who speak English as a first language may also find this book useful.

Reading of a substantial number of recent technical publications discloses excessive violations of certain stylistic and grammatical proprieties. These violations suggest failure of editors and teachers to get their message across and of writers to approach writing with fitting concern. The most frequent and significant violations are selected and explained. Speculation on causes and suggestions for elimination of the violations accompany the explanations.

Interest in the syntactic development of children's language has attracted the attention of linguists and educators during the last two decades. In his evaluation of this growing interest, Loban (1963) urged that the scientific study of language use new approaches for analysis and measurement. Endicott (1973) has stated that describing language for the purpose of research and curriculum design is essential. Information obtained from language research about the acquisition of syntactic patterns has important implications for curriculum design. The use of this information in the development of curriculum materials may effect change upon the oral language, written composition, and reading comprehension of school children. Among groups of educators most interested in the language processes of children are those involved in the teaching of reading. Researchers have begun to study children's language to determine its relationship to the reading process. Results of this research indicate that much written material is too complex syntactically for the persons for whom it was written (Bormuth, 1969; Granowsky, 1971; Glazer, 1973). Many researchers believe that information concerning the acquisition of syntactic patterns in children's language is critical in the development of reading materials. Research by Strickland (1962), Loban (1963), Hocker (1963),Ruddell (1965), Templin (1966), Robertson (1968), and Tatham (1970) confirms the importance of the relationship between children's familiarity with syntactic patterning and their level of comprehension in reading.

Soundspel is a phonetic spelling system based on the transliteration of 44,000 most-used English words. It uses letters and letter-pairs consistently to represent the sounds in those words. A computer programmed with both the traditional and the “logical” spellings can provide Soundspel output in numerous stages of conversion from traditional English input.

WHEN W. NELSON FRANCIS said that, he didn't have it in mind to fun nobody. For sure there was no way he could have knowed, twenty years ahead of time, that his words would look like something meant for a bitter joke today. The revolution he was talking about (using structuralist linguistics to teach English) hasn't happened vet, to begin with. And to go on with, another one-generative transformational linguistics-has come along in the meantime and turned out about as useful to a teacher as a rubber crutch. The structuralists and the transformationalists haven't either one of them come up with the sweeping consequences Francis was so sure about. Structural linguistics gets used mostly in foreign language classes; and transformational grammar, in spite of two three papers saying that it might could be a little bit of use after all, has swept right into and right back out of English classes, leaving precious little behind itmaybe a good word or two said for sentence-combining exercises.1 There was the Roberts English Series, poor sorry thing, that no doubt meant well; all it did in the long run was teach a whole generation of English teachers to despise transformational grammar forevermore. Chomsky himself, they'll tell you, said T-grammar had no place in anybody's English class, and they're with him on that; by now you won't hear much else said on the subject amongst teachers. Seeing as how all this is true, it's purely radical of me to say that I disagree with all that; it's radicaller yet to say I think I can prove I'm right. Let me get the radicalities over with first off, then, by saving that six years work has got me convinced that transformational grammar for sure does have a place in

WHEN T. S. ELIOT penned the words, Let us go then, you and I, he could hardly anticipate that students and teachers of English grammar would find so much interest in his use of the first person pronouns. As a linguist I found nothing amiss in his expression, but one day I overheard a colleague explaining that the grammatically correct form of the sentence should have been, Let us go then, you and me, so that the pronouns (you and me) would be in the objective case, together being the appositive of the us, the subject of the infinitive phrase, us go, which is the object of the verb let. Wait a grammatical minute, I interrupted. sentence is absolutely correct; you are simply being misled by a surface structure which has the same form as the objective case but, which, in fact, is not. The words that followed cannot be printed here, but I will attempt to reconstruct my argument to convince other traditionally minded colleagues of the error of their ways and to restore a degree of grammatical dignity to J. Alfred Prufrock.

In that twenty-five-year series of books and articles spotlighting poor Johnny's writing and reading problems, educators and laymen have offered dozens of reasons for Johnny's plight. Some blame too much TV watching; some blame progressive education and the drift away from basics, phonics, and grammar usually; some criticize school systems that have switched to new forms of grammar, like transformational, which may have confused the kids. The reason Leroy writes poorly is that he can't hear the sound of his voice on paper. He's the high school kid who says to his English teacher: can tell you about that story, but I can't write it. Hle's not kidding. He has the voice for it, he can even get excited about it, but he doesn't have the training to put that voice on paper. So what's the solution? Well, let's look at Leroy's problem a bit more closely-and maybe the reason our schools produce so few really good writers. If you write well, you will have no difficulty reading the sentences belowaloud. Want to try it?

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