The research purpose was to identify (1) the problems encountered by academic and administrative staff in emails received from students, (2) positive and negative qualities of the authentic emails of higher education students, (3) functional explanations of the academic email, (4) the problems encountered by students in emails received from…

Concern exists among both academics and employers regarding the quality of graduates' writing. The complaint, as it is most commonly phrased, is that young graduates can no longer "string a simple sentence together". If true, this is a problem: the quality of students' writing seriously affects their chances in the job market. In this…

Argues that composition teachers should accept as little blame as possible for students' errors in using the apostrophe, that a large chunk of the blame should be assigned to workbooks with oversimple rules, and that basic writers have more important things to worry about. (RS)

Suggests a system for teaching punctuation, in which the independent clause is recognized as the fundamental building block of all language. Maintains that punctuation is not based on rules but on principles governing the relationship between one independent clause and the next. (TB)

In this paper, the author explains the simplification of a theory of punctuation for college-level instruction. He describes a systematization of the punctuation marks that has pedagogical possibilities. He concludes by stressing that the notion of a hierarchy of punctuation marks is not a difficult one for college students; after all, the…

Considers the conventions of quotation marks--or "perverted commas"--and identifies seven uses, including shudder quotes (slang or inappropriate words) and scare quotes (used for attention or emphasis). Notes that quotation marks influence meaning and that finding a personal voice entails using language without quotes. (MM)

Discusses techniques for teaching advanced writers to use punctuation to create rhetorical effects. (MS)

Suggests the use of a chart to help students learn to use apostrophes correctly. (TJ)

Explores one aspect of the relationship between intonation and punctuation. Outlines the historical development of punctuation, and compares twentieth-century punctuation rules with what is known about the division of connected speech into intonation-groups. Suggests that, where syntactic prescription and intonational usage conflict, a return to…

Undergraduate control groups (n=45) completed textbook grammar exercises; experimental groups (n=53) used self-paced tutorial/drill-and-practice software. Although students using computer-assisted instruction (CAI) made significant improvement, they had reservations about the method. CAI combined with instructor interaction seem to be a feasible…

Explains and illustrates some rarely explained and often underemphasized punctuation principles. (AEA)

Titular colonicity (presence of colon in title) is shown to index the progress of scholarship over a century. Analysis of 1,150 titles in education, psychology, and literary criticism reveals use of the colon in the majority of contemporary titles across disciplines, thereby demonstrating the progressive complexity of scholarship. (Author/MLW)

Points to introspective evidence that both writers and readers experience auditory imagery of intonations, accents, and hesitations in written language. Suggests that some aspects of this "written language prosody" are made partially overt through punctuation. (RAE)

Notes that, although linguistics has had little influence on composition pedagogy, the study of functional grammar or linguistic performance (how language is actually used) is of direct value to composition theory. Offers an extended discussion of a functional approach to punctuation instruction, and proposes a functional approach in other areas…

Business communication faculty (n=187) identified the top grammatical errors made by undergraduates as follows: subject-verb agreement, sentence fragments, subject-pronoun agreement, nonparallel series, and wrong word choice. Top punctuation errors included run-on sentences, comma splice, missing commas, and misuse of the possessive apostrophe.…