gilbert@aimmi.UUCP.UUCP (05/06/87)
In article <8704250321.AA15773@uhmanoa.ICS.HAWAII.EDU> todd@humu.UUCP (The Perplexed Wiz) writes: >In article <12295086246.19.HAYES@SPAR-20.ARPA> HAYES@SPAR-20.ARPA writes: >>Let me briefly add a seconding voice to Linda Means comments on the horrible >>output of the style-criticising programs illustrated a while ago. That >>people should suggest using such things to influence children almost makes >>me agree with Weizenbaum. >I think that we have two extreme views here. I agree that the style >checkers available for microcomputers are not very sophisticated. I also >agree that such tools should not be used exclusively to teach children >(or any other age group for that matter). However, to say that these >microcomputer based style checkers have no place in teaching children >to write in not correct. A few simple grammatical rules (concord, apostrophes, tense structure, clausal agreement), as these style checkers stand, you are most incorrect - and I am even more surprised at such comments when they come from a psychology grad - unless you're doing AI or rat research that is in which case you're probably a long way from mainstream psychology:-). The problem with most checkers is that the rules they embody have often just been made up by technical writing pundits. As long as they stick to indoctrinating those engineers and other culturally deprived students WHO NEED HELP WITH THEIR WRITING (not all do), I don't mind - they probably do improve the writing of some people from dreadful and unintelligible to ugly and constipated :-). However, the minute their jibberish is proposed as something for the whole school population, then the authority of the armchair philistines has to be scrutinised carefully. There is not an ounce of decent psychological research on text comprehension behind most of the pronouncements of technical writing rednecks. As for literary aesthetics, this doesn't get a look in - anyone care to stick a novel through one of these joke programs? So, the first prerequisite for style checkers in schools is proper experimental validation of the rule base - breaking/obeying rules must be shown to have a measurable effect on comprehension performance. The second prerequisite is the harder one and takes us into the Weizenbaum camp - the rules checked in the experiments must be translated faithfully into a program - not easy as we know that our current formal representations of language and knowledge are wholly inadequate, and given the nature of computation may never be adequate. Philosophical objections apart, I will never trust programmers with no background in what they are programming to get the job right unless the domain experts have a cast iron way of validating the program (this works well for many science and engineering problems, as well as for simple data processing). So, the current style rules aren't rules, and even if they were their encapsulation in a computer program cannot be proven. -- Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN JANET: gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi ARPA: gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk UUCP: ..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert