Pretranscription, the individual skills needed to produce a mailable typewritten letter from shorthand notes, should be included in each semester of shorthand instead of just in the final class, according to this article. The author suggests strategies for teaching such elements as spelling, punctuation, and mailability and offers a guideline for…

The Sentence Combining Test was administered to three groups of college students (N=45) identified as learning disabled (LD), normal, and basic (underachieving) writers. Among results was that LD writers made a higher percentage of meaning errors across all subtests. (Author/JW)

Written for the third- and fourth-grade levels, this workbook gives students practice in using context clues and reading comprehension to apply punctuation rules, as well as in carefully reading and following directions. Noting that the activities are based on the idea that punctuation is necessary to make written communication clear, the…

Spelling, punctuation, grammar, and AP (Associated Press) style errors are among the factors that are hurting media credibility in the eyes of the public. Some have said that journalism schools share the blame for sloppy grammar because they do not prepare students. A survey of 100 randomly selected journalism schools and examination of their…

Based on author's master's thesis, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tenn., (1967?). (RD)

This concluding article in a series concerning the use of the comma in Spanish gives specific examples of its use from Spanish literature. Concluding remarks outline the major purposes of the comma. (NCR)

Even English speakers do not always know when to use a hyphen. Examples are given of some fairly clear-cut cases where the hyphen should be used, leading to the formulation of some usable rules. (IFS/WGA)

Discusses narratives and the possible narrative structure of the process leading up to the completed article. Discusses two approaches to categorization and the most commonly referred to criteria for identifying narratives as well as the problems principally involved in punctuation of sequences and thus in deciding which narrative we are dealing…

Two groups of 28 students each alternated as experimental and control groups in spelling and punctuation projects. Experimental groups used goal setting and self-evaluation to monitor learning, supported by class discussions. Results showed the intervention raised spelling scores 60-80%, punctuation scores 70-75%. Progress was achieved only when…

This paper investigated six to nine year old children's ability to use contractive and possessive apostrophes, the effects of type and token frequency, and the effect of teaching on this ability. Apostrophes provide an interesting opportunity to examine the basis of frequency effects in rule inference, as type and token frequencies dissociate in…

This article reports some outcomes from an exploratory study that compares children diagnosed with ADHD and without language impairment with typically developing children for aspects of language use. Discourse analysis based on a systemic functional linguistics approach is applied to spoken and written samples from three different text types that…

The current study aims at investigating the effect of a suggested CALL program on developing EFL learners' mechanics of writing in English. An unbiased simple random sample of eighty fourth-year students (2006/2007) of the English Department at the Faculty of Education in Kafr El-Sheikh has been chosen to carry out the experiment. Forty students…

Intended as a home resource book for children, this grammar handbook is a quick reference source for questions on grammar and punctuation. The book provides information, as well as sentences to illustrate each definition and guideline, about the most frequently used terms in grammar and punctuation. The book's information is organized…

The punctuation system presented in this paper has explanatory power insofar as it explains how good writers punctuate. The paper notes that good writers have learned, through reading, the differences among a hierarchy of marks and acquired a sense of independent clauses that allows them to use the hierarchy, along with a reader-sensitive notion…