Linguistics Senior Research Projects
Document Type
Capstone Project
Submission Date
4-21-2016
Keywords
Spelling errors, perception formation, intelligence, misspelling
Abstract
This study seeks to understand how the presence of spelling errors affects readers’ perceptions of an author’s intelligence and writing ability. Undergraduate students and professors read a short essay and completed a sixteen-question questionnaire concerning their perceptions of the author and the essay. The number of spelling errors present (zero, five, or ten) in the essay was manipulated by the researcher. Participant perceptions of the author and the essay suffered as more spelling errors were found. Participants in the five- and ten-error conditions judged both the author and the essay more harshly, giving it lower scores. Further, intelligence ratings suffered as a result of more spelling errors. No strong correlation was found between perceived spelling ability and perceptions of the author and essay. These findings suggest that readers base their perceptions of both an author’s intelligence and an essay’s quality on the absence of spelling errors, but not on how well an individual thinks he or she spells.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Schloneger, Rachel M., "Is This Author Intelligent? The Effect of Spelling Errors on Perception of Authors" (2016). Linguistics Senior Research Projects. 2.
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/linguistics_senior_projects/2
Included in
Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Other Linguistics Commons
