What we can do for you

During an online or face-to-face Writing Center conference, you’ll have a chance to work with an experienced writing instructor on a piece of expository writing — a draft of a course paper, resume, report, application essay, cover letter, seminar paper, dissertation, thesis, etc.

Writing Center instructors are graduate teaching assistants or professional staff, all of whom are experienced writing teachers. They can help you develop ideas for a paper and organize them effectively, and they can give you helpful advice to guide your revision.

Each year thousands of students at the University — from freshmen through doctoral students — find such individual consultations beneficial.

What we cannot do for you

The Writing Center unfortunately cannot work with you on papers for a handful of University writing courses, including Communications-A, ESL, and creative writing courses.

The reasons for this limitation are several. First, Writing Center instructors are trained to teach expository writing; in contrast, creative writing course instructors are specifically trained to teach the different types of writing assignments found in that discipline. Second, budgetary constraints do limit the amount of teaching the Writing Center can do each semester. Most university course instructors assign writing but — unlike instructors in Comm-A, ESL, and creative writing courses — cannot dedicate all their class time to improving students’ writing skills.

While we wish we could help every student, we have had to make it our first priority to serve students whose classrooms are not primarily focused on the teaching of writing.

We happily work with students on many writing tasks not assigned through their university classes, but in general, we restrict this sort of assistance to brief “career-related” writing, such as resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant and financial aid application letters, etc.

If you aren’t sure whether the Writing Center can help you with a particular piece of writing, please call us at 263-1992 and talk to us about it!

About Proofreading and Editing

Writing Center instructors will not edit or proofread your papers for you. Nor will they do your reading or thinking or writing for you.

Instead, their goal is to teach you to do these things for yourself so that you can become a better, more confident writer. Take a look at our Writer’s Handbook for help with finding and eliminating common mechanical errors in your writing.