Concludes that syntax as an isolated factor carries no special effects on the two factors comprising ethos--authoritativeness and character. (FL)

Compares cohesive ties and chains in the good and poor essays of college freshmen. Results indicate that longer chains, greater variety of words, and greater maturity or word choice characterize good writing. (SRT)

This study examined whether the use of complex headed nominal structures resulted in a higher qualitative rating of a passage than the use of simple headed nominal structures and whether the use of more mature vocabulary resulted in a higher qualitative rating of a passage than the use of simple vocabulary. (HOD)

Investigates the question of T-unit length stability in informative discourse written by freshmen near the end of an intensive course in college writing. (HOD)

An analysis of descriptive and narrative passages written by 45 first-semester college freshmen early in the semester suggests that mean T-unit length is not a stable individual trait either within the descriptive mode or across description and narration. (GT)

Experiments conducted with freshman composition students suggested that (1) the repeated use of a control stimulus passage does not result in increased syntactic complexity; (2) both overt and covert cues elicit more complex writing than do no-cue situations; and (3) the effect of overt cues seems to be retained, at least across a short duration.…

Describes a study that examined how audience differences, realized as varying degrees of intimacy or familiarity with a writer, affect syntactic and strategic aspects of style and that sought to determine the extent to which audience adaptation is developmental among fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students as well as expert adults. (DD)

Describes a sequence of four studies that explored how people composed sentences while writing expository essays. Among the findings were that the sentence composition process was often guided by a writing plan, and the most frequent changes accomplished by revision of parts were word choice, aspect of meaning, and grammatical structure. (HOD)

Reports on a study that examined the development of audience-adapted writing skills between the end of elementary school and the beginning of college, concluding that all students demonstrated sensitivity to the needs of a young reader. (HOD)

Presents a rationale for studying psycholinguistic aspects of the writing process and outlines a model of writing based on a psycholinguistic model of talking. Offers an analytical study of 450 syntax errors written by college students demonstrating the usefulness of studying writing as derivative of normal speaking processes. (HOD)

The sentence structure in 64 academic journals representing the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering was examined to determine (1) what structures are common to all academic writing, (2) the range of variation within academic writing, and (3) the extent to which sentence structure differs in the academic areas. (HOD)

Examines the relationship between syntactic complexity and quality ratings of narrative and argumentative writing of students in grades 6, 10, and 12. (HOD)