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)

Claims that punctuation contributes substantially to writing effectiveness. Argues that punctuation's primary function is to signal the "prosody" (patterns of pitch, stress, and hesitations) that authors have in mind when they write. Observes that a sensitivity to the sound of written language is essential for the effective use of…

With increasing enrollments in journalism, many journalism instructors contend that problems of spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation are particularly acute. Some of the questions raised at recent gatherings include: Are formal rules of English grammar dying? Is proper punctuation mere pedantry? What can journalism schools do about grammar and…

A study compared native and nonnative reading styles in order to see whether Japanese readers process text differently than readers whose native language uses a phonetic alphabet. Subjects, 29 native readers of Japanese, 37 advanced-level nonnatives and 39 intermediate-level nonnatives enrolled in Japanese language courses were randomly assigned…

Describes a classroom activity that emphasizes syntactic fluency and the richness of linguistic resources available in written language, while downplaying the "dos and don'ts" of traditional punctuation instruction. (RL)

The prevalence of writing errors made by third-year medical students from the class of 1981 at a large midwestern medical school was studied. The papers of 253 students taking family medicine were evaluated for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Four types of grammar errors and seven punctuation errors were analyzed, and each word…

The origins of the English Genitive Apostrophe (EGA) are relatively recent, and considerable variation in its use by native speakers is evident. A study of 45 undergraduates/postgraduates suggests overall that there continues to be a lack of accord between usage of and prescriptive rules for EGA. (Contains 37 references.) (Author/LB)

A study was conducted to test the proposition that the act of oral reading would be significantly different between competent and incompetent writers and the corollary proposition that the act of oral reading closely approximates the act of writing. A writing sample was devised that included three major features: all the common marks of…

As a step toward developing appropriate instructional techniques to help learning disabled college students, mechanical errors were compared in the expository essays and controlled stimulus passages (rewrites) of 15 learning disabled, 15 normal, and 15 basic writers at the college level. Analysis of both types of writing samples showed that…

A study examined patterns of English usage in 52 Japanese university freshmen's written compositions, particularly in the use of the subordinating conjunction "because." It was found that students often fragmented sentences when "because" was involved, or used a comma to separate a trailing dependent "because" clause…

A technique to help English as a second language students master the basic elements of expository prose is considered in terms of course objectives and the types of assignments used to accomplish them. A characteristic of many highly verbal students entering a college program is their propensity to "talk on paper" in an informal, ungrammatical,…