Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Summer 8-12-2016 Strategic Error as Style: Finessing the Grammar Checker Sarah Smith Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Smith, Sarah, "Strategic Error as Style: Finessing the Grammar Checker." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/167 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. STRATEGIC ERROR AS STYLE: FINESSING THE GRAMMAR CHECKER by SARAH MCARTHUR SMITH Under the Direction of George Pullman, PhD ABSTRACT Composition studies lacks a comprehensive theory of error, one which successfully defines error in writing and offers a pedagogical response to ostensible errors that neither ignores nor pathologizes them. Electronic text-critiquing technologies offer some promise of helping writers notice and correct errors, but they are under-researched in composition and rarely well-integrated into pedagogical praxis. This research on the grammar and style checker in Microsoft Word considers the program as an electronic checklist for making decisions about what counts as an error in a given rhetorical situation. This study also offers a theory of error grounded in the idea of attention, or cognitive load, some of which an electronic checker can relieve in its areas of its greatest effectiveness, which this research quantifies. The proposed theory of error forms the basis for a pedagogy of register, understood as typified style, and establishes that error itself can be a strategic style move.