News Digest_ By The Associated Press
Computer’s red pencil
flags students ’ errors
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — When
a Mesa College student first turns in
a writing assignment for Richard
Berkey’s English composition class,
Berkey never sees it.
Instead, a computer produces a
critique, complete with flagged
misspelling and grammatical errors,
and advises the student how to
shape it up.
“We’ve found that students are
running their papers through on all
of their classes, and most of them
will raise their grade by at least one
letter just by doing this,” Berkey
said.
The program was developed by
AT&T and fine-tuned at Colorado
State University and again at Mesa
by Berkey and Jerry Nolan of the
college’s computer services staff.
The Mesa College program de
mands less from the students, “not
necessarily dumping down, but set
ting goals our students can reach,”
Berkey said.
“You could program a computer
for any type of writing — academic,
technical or news,” Nolan said. “It
would depend on what you wanted
it to do.”
Berkey said most freshmen wri
ters used the passive voice too
often, relied on slang too much and
reached for vocabulary that was too
advanced for what they were trying
to say.
“We try to get them to use active
language, and the computer will
point out specific sentences," he
said. “We like less than one prepo
sition per sentence, and this will
point out the ‘wooly’ words that you
shouldn’t use, like ‘prioritize’ and
‘plausible deniability’.”
When students rewrite an assign
ment based on the computer’s poin
ters, their grades rise, almost with
out exception, Berkey said.
What hasn’t been mastered yet,
Nolan said, is directing a computer
to analyze punctuation.
“It’s tough for computers to deal
with commas. They have a hard time
with any internal punctuation and
we haven’t figured it out yet," he
said.
Even with other grammatical
matters, the computer isn’t always
right, a fact Berkey says he con
stantly stresses to his students.
Gulf attacks claim 1st fatalities
MANAMA, Bahrain — Another con
voy of U.S. warships and Kuwaiti tankers
steamed south Thursday through the
Persian Gulf, where two supply ship
crewmen became the first fatalities of
renewed tanker attacks by Iran and
Iraq.
Iraq said its warplanes raided a
tanker, and shipping sources said Iran
ian speedboat-borne fighters attacked
a Japanese tanker and an Italian
motorship.
Fire from Iraqi warplanes or Iranian
speedboats have hit at least 20 ships
registered in nine different nations
since Saturday, said gulf-based ship
ping sources. They say the number at
least doubles the average for a month
in 1986.
Women earn 7(K to male dollar
WASHINGTON — The big gap
between the earning0 of women and
men can largely be b .med or cluster
ing of females in certain occupations
and in their lack of work experience, a
Census Bureau study suggested Thurs
day.
Overall, it said, women continue to
earn only 70 cents for every dollar
taken home by a man.
While the disparity remains great, it
represents progress from the 62 cents
on the dollar women were earning in
1979, aide Gordon W. Green Jr., or the
Census Bureau’s socioeconomic statis
I-1
tics division.
In addition to job-clustering and less
experience, other factors setting women
workers apart from men include time
taken off from work and differences in
their fields of study in college.
"There is an important message here
for the woman who is career-minded
and wants to get ahead at work,” Green
said in an interview.
It tells them that if they go to col
lege, they should study fields men have
traditionally studied — such as law,
engineering, science and mathematics
— and if they do not choose college, to
try and develop technical training or
enter the skilled trades, he said.
And, Green added, if family duties
call them away from work, women
should try to limit those interruptions
so they will not let their skills become
obsolete or lose seniority.
Nearly half of employed women —
47 percent — have been off work for at
least six months sometime in their
work lives, compared with only 13 per
cent of men, the study found.
Family duties were the most com
mon reason for women to interrupt
work, while inability to find a job was
the mjyor reason for men.
Nebraskan
Editor Mika Raillay
472-1766
Managing Editor Jan Denims
Assoc News Editors Jann Nyffeler
Mike Hooper
Editorial
Page Editor Jeanne Bourne
Wire Editor Linda Hartmann
Copy Desk Chief Joan Razee
Sports Editor Jeff Apal
Arts a Entertain
ment Editor Bill Allan
Asst. Arts &
Entertainment Editor Charles Lieurance
Graphics Editor Mark Davis
Asst Graphics Editor Tom Lauder
Photo Chief Paul Vonderlage
Night News Editors Curt Wagner
Scott Harrah
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___-_-__I
__In Brief
Big PACs support incumbents most, study says
WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest political action committees,
representing the views of business, labor, agriculture and other special
interests, gave at least 80 percent of their campaign donations to
incumbent office holders in 1985-86, according to a private study
released Thursday.
The study by Common Cause showed a continuation of a trend in
which PACs focus their money on incumbents, in theory because most
incumbents traditionally win re-election and thus will still be in a
position to influence legislation in which the PACs are intei ted.
State coalition seeks to block Bork appointment
The Nebraska Civil Liberties Union has established a coalition to
oppose the appointment of Robert H. Bork as an associate justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court, Executive Director John G. Taylor said. The coali
tion will take on Nebraska’s role in the national campaign by the
American Civil Liberties Union to block the appointment.
“We plan to present Judge Bork through his own words,” ACLU
Executive Director Ira Glasser said in a statement. “Those words reveal
what America would be like if his views prevail.”
Prosecutor asks for 8 years in prison for pilot
MOSCOW — The prosecutor accused Mathias Rust of taking an ego
trip when he hedge-hopped his small plane to Red Square, and
demanded Thursday that the West German teen-ager be sentenced to
eight years in a labor camp.
Vladimir Andreyev said the pilot’s goal in his daring flight to the
Kremlin on May 28 was “cheap popularity” rather than a discussion with
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev about peace and disarmament, as
Rust has claimed.
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