| Often, texts that have been written collaboratively do not "speak with a single voice." Eliminating stylistic incongruity, a difficult undertaking for both collaborative and singular writers, is the desired function of a software tool. This thesis describes the first cycle of an iterative software development process towards meeting this goal. The user requirements are analyzed with respect to a model that synthesizes established research, and then the requirements are taxonomized. Then, a framework for performing computational stylistic assessments is developed for later tool design. An experiment designed to measure the subjectivity in stylistic assessment--a relevant issue for making deterministic, computational stylistic assessments--was performed; the results indicate that future stylistic assessment tools must account for different patterns of assessment. Several design directions motivated by these results are suggested. |
