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This service is for currently registered University of Wisconsin-Madison students. If you have a quick writing question, please ask the Writing Consultant (open to the public). Please read these instructions carefully before submitting a draft! |
Email Instruction Request
As a UW-Madison student currently enrolled in almost any class, you can send a draft of a short paper to a Writing Center instructor over email. The instructor will read your work, and then begin an email exchange with you about your paper, asking questions and making suggestions, while paying particular attention to your goals and concerns. Please note that during busy times of the semester, we may be unable to accommodate your request; in that case, you will hear back from the Online Writing Center, letting you know.
What sort of response am I going to get? We will work with you, using your stated concerns, to identify the most important steps you can take to revise your draft. Instructors have 30 minutes to read and respond to your draft, and we know that your time to revise is limited. Therefore, we will not be able to comment on every aspect of your draft. As you can imagine, tutoring online is rather different from in-person tutoring. We won’t be able to ask you questions as easily, or have a real give-and-take conversation about your writing. This difference means that we’re not likely to focus a lot on punctuation, grammar, or other “sentence-level” issues. It also means that you might be better off making an in-person appointment at the regular Writing Center if you’re new to college-level writing, or if you’re writing for the first time in a new kind of class. What kinds of papers can I send? Writing instruction via email works best with shorter papers, so please don’t send a draft of more than 5 double-spaced pages. If you are writing something longer, make an in-person appointment at the regular (face-to-face) Writing Center. Please send only one essay per day. If you send two and our instructors are busy, we will only be able to respond to one. Thus, if you do choose to send two drafts, please let us know which is your first priority. What classes qualify for E-Instruction? Almost all classes! But like the “brick-and-mortar” Writing Center, the Online Writing Center unfortunately cannot work with you on papers for a handful of writing-oriented classes, including Communications-A, ESL, and creative writing courses. In these classes, your course instructor is your specially trained writing teacher, a resource to which students in other types of courses don’t have access.
Please note that, especially when a weekend intervenes, the turn-around time can get pretty long. Therefore, please send your draft to us well before the paper’s due date so that you have time to revise according to our feedback. If your paper is due soon, making an appointment in the regular (face-to-face) Writing Center would be better. If you need feedback even sooner, check out our live Online Writing Center. Okay . . .Now that you’ve read all our instructions, please fill out the request form completely, and submit it. Make sure to fill in all the fields. We look forward to working with you! |
