What Scoring Rubrics Teach Students (and Teachers) about Style

This collection argues that style should be considered central to the enterprise of composition, from how we theorize the work we do as a discipline to how we teach students to write. While the other chapters in this section provide ways to enact such a style-centered pedagogy, this chapter investigates a place where style already exists in many composition classrooms: the scoring rubric. I submit that grading style is teaching style, and that part of making style central to our pedagogies is recognizing the pedagogical function of our evaluation of student writing, and how it shapes students’ understanding of what effective writing is. This means not just actively and consciously bringing style into our classrooms, but also interrogating the places where it silently lurks