An Empirical Assessment of Style: Trained and Untrained Students' Responses

Abstract

This article presents results of a study to determine whether 878 undergraduate students can notice and correctly label stylistic differences between passages. The student sample consisted of two groups: trained (students who had completed a course in business communications) and untrained (students who had not completed such a course). The findings show that both groups are able to perceive stylistic differences one-half of the time and that trained students have a slight edge over untrained students with respect to labeling passages correctly.