This study compares two community newspapers, through content analysis, for indices of elaboration identified through various theoretical sources. The object of the study is to trace the relationship of economic development and technological growth to use of elaborative elements in text describing science and technology. One community was ascertained by census and other data to be developing; the other community was determined to be stagnant; indices for depth and breadth in coverage, use of visualization in figures of speech, and other indices were compared. Copy from the developing area showed strong correlations of all indices for breadth and depth; coverage from the other area, while containing elements of visualization, showed fewer correlations.

A great deal of empirical research has been done in the past to test writing rules commonly taught in the classroom. To date, however, no one has constructed a deep theory of the relationship between cognition and writing that confirms the writing rules and explains why they work. Grunig, Ramsey, and Schneider construct a deep theory of the relationship between language, cognition, and writing — based upon theories and research in the fields of cognitive psychology, social psychology, philosophy of language, information theory, reading theory, rhetoric, and systems theory. The authors build a theory of writing that contains fifteen definitions, eleven premises, and eleven principles. The eleven axiomatic principles subsume practical writing rules, especially science writing rules, and offer a broad framework for research. The article concludes with results of several exploratory studies using the “signaled stopping technique” to observe the cognitive effects of writing.