The Importance of Mechanics in Journalistic Writing: A Study of Reporters and Editors

Abstract

These authors asked 86 reporters and their editors to fill out some measures of their knowledge of language mechanics and writing ability. The study found that editors judge reporters according to three major factors: writing mechanics, expressive skills, and journalistic abilities. Reporters judge themselves very similarly. On some tasks, college English majors scored better than did other types of college majors.

Using human judgments to examine the validity of automated grammar, syntax, and mechanical errors in writing

“…The importance of grammatical and structural errors can be seen clearly in writing assessment literature which highlights the importance of these errors in explaining writing quality (Eckes, 2008;Santos, 1988;Zhu, 2003), teaching these rules to students (Graham, 1983;Morris, Blanton, L. Blanton, W., & Perney, 1995), and teacher beliefs about the importance of these rules (Cutler & Graham, 2008). Additionally, structural and mechanical rules are important components of writing across a variety of disciplines and fields including business, engineering (Zhu, 2003), editing, and journalism (Ward & Seifert, 1990) One problem with assessing the importance of structural and mechanical errors in writing is that coding such errors is time intensive, subjective, and prone to inaccuracies. While a number of systems are available that assess structural and mechanical in student writing such as Ginger, Grammarly, and Whitesmoke, these systems are meant to provide automated written corrective feedback to writers (Ranalli, Link, & Chukharev-Hudilainen, 2017) and are not designed for research purposes.…”