ABSTRACT
Literate adolescents and adults often fail to notice the pervasiveness and complexity of writing in modern culture, yet “when one examines the everyday world, one Šnds people engaged in many varieties of writing, some of which may be overlooked as … routine, or commonplace, or unimportant” (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996, p. 3). Scribal tasks range widely in their sophistication and the cognitive demands that they place on writers. Composing a research paper involves extensive planning and intellectual skill, whereas dashing off a quick e-mail or text message may seem almost effortless to a proŠcient user of computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Nonetheless, these activities require not only mastery of a language-itself an astonishingly impressive feat-but also the internalization of a literate system designed to communicate in that language via written text.
