The Study of the Conformity of Writing Behavior of the Authors and Users in Persian Scientific Databases to Guidelines of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature in Terms of Writing Words Continuously, Semi-Spacely and Separately

The overall purpose of the present study is to investigate the conformity of the writing behavior of the authors and users of the Persian scientific databases to guidelines of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature in terms of writing words continuously, semi-spacely and separately.

This study is an applied one, and the research design is survey and content analysis. The population consists of two groups, available documents in three Persian scientific databases (i.e. Magiran, Regional Center and SID), and the Postgraduate education students of Shiraz University in the academic year of 2013-2014. The research instrument consists of two researcher-made checklists, each of which consists of 12 items of the selected rules among the approved guidelines of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, which include the occurrence of writing words continuously, semi-spacely and separately. 

The findings showed that the writing behavior of users in 23.25 percent of the cases was in line with the ten rules of the guidelines approved by the Academy of Persian Language and Literature; however, 75.76 percent of users ignored these rules. The highest rate of the Conformity was observed between the writing behavior of users with the ten rules in rule of nine (compound words containing the suffix) and the lowest of it in rule of six (Genitives Construction) and ten (Subjective and Adjective). Also, although the writing behavior of the authors was contrary to the ten rules of the guidelines of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature in only 40 percent of cases, 60 percent of authors followed these rules. The highest rate of the resemblance was observed between the writing behavior of the Authors with the ten rules in rule of eight (compound words containing the prefix) and the lowest of it in rule of six (Genitives Construction). Moreover, the findings showed that even though 62.6 percent of the users knew how to insert semi-spacely words through the computer keyboard, most of the users ignored this.

This research and similar studies could make the Academy of Persian Language and Literature aware of the writing behavior of the authors and users in electronic environments while confronting words with several writing forms. Thus, they may assist the academy in prioritization and policy-making to improve the guidelines on the Persian script. As a result, it is possible to take a standardized and unified script accepted by most of the users.