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Is This Author Intelligent? The Effect Of Spelling Errors On Perception Of Authors, Rachel M. Schloneger
Is This Author Intelligent? The Effect Of Spelling Errors On Perception Of Authors, Rachel M. Schloneger
Linguistics Senior Research Projects
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 …