In Pennebaker's journaling protocol, participants should focus on tapping into a negatively charged memory and disregard grammar, spelling, or readability.

“in fact they were told to not pay attention to Accurate grammar to not pay attention to reread ability they were told in fact that their writing could be replete with spelling errors or grammatical errors that didn't matter what was most important is that they tap into a particularly negatively charge memory of their prior life experience”