SLIPS OF THE PEN (AND KEYBOARD)
Small-scale errors of writing, which provide insights into the writing process– at motor level, at the level of lexical retrieval and even at planning level.
Motor errors result from a failure in the signal that the brain sends to the hand or in the contact between hand and keyboard. A striking feature of motor errors (e.g. the ! teh) is how recurrent they are in the output of some individuals. Typing is an activity that demands a great deal of conscious control at the outset, but that gradually becomes proceduralised into a set of automatic keystroke sequences– particularly for frequent words such as the. A characteristic of highly automatic procedures is that they are difficult to reverse, even though the wrong procedure may have been acquired. An interesting area of speculation is whether motor errors simply reflect the configuration of the keyboard (Tand E on the same line, H a line lower) or whether certain keystroke sequences are more difficult for the brain–hand partnership to acquire.
Motor errors in handwriting also show the effects of automatisation. When a string of letters is very frequent, the letters may be inadequately formed or may run into each other because of reduced attention and/or the greater speed of execution. One feature of rapid handwriting is the uncompleted letter, where, for example, the writer makes the upstroke of a b but fails to complete the letter and forms an l.
Sub-lexical errors. A writer might replace a string of letters with another that occurs frequently in other words. One explanation is that sequences of finger movements are chunked by the writer, and that, in signalling the word to be typed, the brain has selected the wrong chunk.
Example: details à detials, existence à existance.
Phonologically based errors. Around 20 per cent of slips of the keyboard involve the substitution of a word that sounds similar to the target one.
Examples are: thereà their, couldà good, you areà your, thanà that, tooà to.
Especially striking in Hotopf’s (1983) data is the substitution of 28 for 20A. Slips like these provide evidence of the part played by phonology in writing, with writers using ‘inner speech’ in order to store a clause while it is being written. It is much rarer to find words replaced by others that are similar in form but not pronunciation (e.g. there ! these).
Errors affecting function words. Function words are especially prone to typing errors. This might be a further reflection of the importance of phonology (the low salience of these words in speech). Or it might be that the writer processes function words at a lower level of attention than content words– perhaps as a result of their high frequency. Frequently one function word is substituted for another (for ! of); or a function word is duplicated (Saw the the movement).
Forward planning. A further type of Slip provides evidence of the way in which a writer plans ahead, storing words in a buffer ahead of executing them. The result is anticipatory errors such as difference intelligence tests or neighbourshoods. In other examples, a feature is transferred between two words, indicating that the two form part of the same stored chunk: e.g. using bothing approaches.
See also: Writing
Further reading: Fromkin (1980); Garman (1990: 230–6); Hotopf (1983)
