A Comparison of Business Communication Quality between Computer Written and Handwritten Samples

The present study compared handwritten reports with those written on computers for ten precisely defined quality factors. Reports written under both conditions by 160 upper division college students in a business communication course were submitted to the Grammatik II program for quality analysis and the results were subsequently analyzed for significant differences using ANOVA. More similarities than differences were found as six of the ten tests did not show significant differences. The findings of the study do not support a general conclusion that basic writing quality will improve when documents are written by computer as compared to writing them by hand. The importance of the present findings as they relate to earlier research and future re search directions are discussed.