Psychology of Written Communication: Selected Readings

"Inside Front cover: The topic of writing has never attracted as much attention from psychologists as that of reading, and yet writing is clearly just as important. This book shows, with selected examples, the kind of research that has been done, and where further research must be done on the topic of written communication. The editor covers a broad framework and has gathered a representative set of papers. The text is divided into five main parts, and for each part James Hartley has written an introductory essay to set the chosen articles in a wider context. *Part 1* looks at some of the theoretical issues involved in the psychology of reading and how each has implications for writing, *Part 2* is concerned with the acquisition of writing skills - children's writing, writing, speaking and dictating letters, and essay writing. *Part 3* is devoted to the theme of producing comprehensible text. Who is the information for? How is it to be used? How can it be displayed to its best advantage? What access structures are needed to help readers with different aims? How can the text be made easy to understand? What research is available to guide our decision-making? *Part 4* concentrates on communicating with new techniques in printing and looks in particularly at the presentation and readability of computer output microfilm, teletext and Viewdata, different systems of word-processing, and the intriguing development of computer conferencing. Finally, *Part 5* looks at some aspects of scientific communication - writing scientific papers and review articles, editorial and review practices of different journals, and the problems of simplification and condensation necessary in the writing of popular introductory textbooks." "Preface: ...It is curious, nonetheless, that the topic of writing has never attracted as much attention from psychologists as that of reading. Yet writing is clearly as important, if not more so. Today’s turbulent society demands that we and our children produce and process documents of great complexity. We need, therefore, to know a great deal more about good writing. The aim of this book is to indicate what has been done — and what might be done — in this field. In putting the text together I have tried to cover a broad framework, and to gather a representative set of papers, each of which makes a contrasting contribution. The text is divided into five main parts, and for each part I have written an introductory essay to set the chosen articles in a wider context. The resulting text, I hope, will be of value to psychologists, teachers, editors and printers: indeed, to anyone who is involved in communicating in print...."