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I"d like to find one term which unites three parts of writing: grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Could orthography or proofreading be used to describe this?

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My guess is that you're asking for a word that distinguishes the analytical technical components of language from the more humanistic, raw components. How close am I? – tenfour Jul 11 '12 at 1:09
Which components are which, and how do you tell? – John Lawler Jul 11 '12 at 16:36
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I remember a teacher at school being less than impressed at an exam board’s use of the acronym SPAG for this purpose... – Brian Nixon Jul 11 '12 at 21:13

3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

There isn't really a word that refers to those three things and no others.

Grammar is not a part of writing. It's part of language, which is spoken.

Spoken language, of course, doesn't have any punctuation or spelling, but it does have grammar. And there are a lot of other things that go into writing besides spelling and punctuation.

I fear someone has been misinforming you.

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I'd disagree with this statement quite a bit. Grammar certainly is part of writing, as writing is an expression of language. "He buyed me a cookies" is still ungrammatical despite my writing it and not speaking it. – Marcus_33 Jul 11 '12 at 17:24
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If you speak the language, you know the grammar, whether you can discuss it or not. And if you speak the language, you use your knowledge in writing it. That's certainly true. But grammar is only a very small part of the things you use in writing: there's rhetoric, stress, vocabulary choice, construction choice (one aspect of grammar), sociolinguistic factors, audience specialization, et complex cetera. "Grammar" per se, especially as taught in Anglophone schools, is largely irrelevant, when it's not downright mythology. – John Lawler Jul 11 '12 at 17:30
up vote 4 down vote

Teachers who assign student writing typically use some kind of rubric listing the various criteria by which the grade for the work is to be calculated. A common term for the criterion that includes grammar, spelling and punctuation is mechanics.

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I see rubric has a sense I didn't know about: "A printed set of scoring criteria for evaluating student work and for giving feedback". – jwpat7 Jul 11 '12 at 16:04
up vote 2 down vote

I would use 'orthography' as inclusive of (correct) grammar and punctuation, not solely as a slightly pretentious synonym of 'accepted spelling'.

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