  In this paper we study rewriting systems for groups and monoids, focusing on
situations where finite convergent systems may be difficult to find or do not
exist. We consider systems which have no length increasing rules and are
confluent and then systems in which the length reducing rules lead to
geodesics. Combining these properties we arrive at our main object of study
which we call geodesically perfect rewriting systems. We show that these are
well-behaved and convenient to use, and give several examples of classes of
groups for which they can be constructed from natural presentations. We
describe a Knuth-Bendix completion process to construct such systems, show how
they may be found with the help of Stallings' pregroups and conversely may be
used to construct such pregroups.
