Writing Center Basics
The Writing Center at UND is a FREE service for students and faculty. When you come in for an appointment (regular appointments are a half hour long), one of the Center's consultants will sit down with you and go over concerns you have about your project. Not exactly sure what you want to go over? That's fine, too. Just want an unbiased person to read through your paper and give you feedback? We can do that. Having trouble with citations for a research project? We've got style manuals and handouts to help.
Writing Center services include:
* Individual sessions with trained consultants during any stage of the writing process
* Mac and IBM computers. Printing available with student ID
* Services via e-mail (see suggestions below*)
* Consulation/facilitation with peer response groups or collaborative writing groups
* Style guides for APA, MLA, Turabian, Chicago Manual of Style, and others
* In-class presentations on Writing Center Services
Writing Center consultants are trained to offer positive, constructive responses to writing in various disciplines and in various stages of the project. Come to the Writing Center for help with everything from brainstorming and deciding on a topic to editing and polishing your final draft.
Here are just some of the things we can help you with when you come in:
Getting Started
It's what every writer dreads: having to face that blank page. If that's what's holding you back, we may be able to help. Our consultants are good at listening, asking questions, and generating ideas. We can't do the writing for you, but we can help you think through a difficult writing problem, decide on an appropriate approach, and get those first elusive words down on paper.
Planning and Organizing
Did your outline go out the window as soon as you sat down to write? Is your first draft a hopeless mess of brilliant ideas? Whether you organize at the beginning of the writing project or after you've already produced an initial draft, we can work with you to produce a well-structured piece of writing that satisfies your own and your reader's need for order.
Developing Ideas
Our consultants may not have special expertise in the subject you're writing about, but we can often spot confusing explanations, flaws in logic, and points that could use further development. If an objective reader is what you need, we can do the job.
Voice, Style, and Fluency
Does your writing sound flat, boring, or choppy? Bring it in and let us make some suggestions for brightening the style and improving the flow.
Editing and Proofreading
If your main concern is "correctness"--getting the grammar, punctuation, and spelling right--we can help you develop your editing skills. Sometimes it's a matter of learning a few simple proofreading techniques. Or it may mean using the handbooks, spellcheckers, and resources we have on hand.
Documentation and Citation
Don't know how to cite a reference you're using? Can't remember the difference between MLA and Turabian? Writing Center consultants don't have the answers memorized, but we can provide current copies of all the major style manuals and help you locate information you can't find. We also have brief handouts on MLA and APA style for you to take away and use on your own.
Just Doing It!
Maybe what you need most is a quiet place to write. We're happy to provide that too--and there'll always be someone ready to help. Just ask!
*Suggestions for using Writing Center services via e-mail
Please Note: Appointments are needed for email sessions just as for any other session
writing.center@und.edu
University Writing Center consultants are available to work with students through e-mail (especially distance students, although there may be times when e-mail sessions are also useful for on-campus students). Consultants are trained to help students plan, draft, revise, and edit their own work. There is no charge to the student for this service.
Follow these guidelines to make your e-mail session as helpful to you as possible:
Plan ahead Conducting a Writing Center-session-over e-mail can entail a series of back-and-forth messages, which means that long distance sessions are inappropriate for writers who need help "right now." At the very least, you need to leave time for your e-mail to "reach" the Writing Center and for a consultant to read and respond to your message. We respond to e-mails as quickly as we can-usually within two working days of receiving them, but sooner if possible.
- Tell us all about your assignment Papers aren't generically "good" or "bad" (although papers are more or less clear, more or less grammatically correct, etc.). A stronger paper will be one that addresses the assignment fully, thoughtfully, and according to the instructor's specifications. We need details about the assignment in order to help you do those things.
- Identify your questions We are weary to conduct long distance sessions according to the same principles as we use for face-to-face sessions. So we'll want to begin with your own sense of the kinds of help you need and your own questions. The more specific the questions, the more likely that we'll be able to provide useful comments for you. For example, a question like "Is there anything I can do to improve this paper?" doesn't tell the consultant much about your particular concerns. But if you ask, "Do I really have a thesis here?" or "How can I improve the organization of this paper?" we'll be better able to provide a useful response.
In general, you might consider the following categories of possible writing problem areas as you frame your questions: getting started, developing a thesis; developing/expanding the paper; developing greater depth of thought; organizing a draft; introducing or concluding the paper; writing clearly; avoiding redundancy; improving fluency or transitions; following a required format; developing solid sentence structure; improving punctuation/grammar/mechanics; documenting appropriately.
- Consider copying your paper into the text of your e-mail message Depending on your questions, we may not need to read your entire paper; perhaps we can just help you think about possible approaches to organization, an introduction, analysis, support. But in many cases it helps to be able to read what you've written so far. E-mailing attachments is notoriously problematic, so it's probably better if you copy your paper while you're in your word processing program and then paste it into your e-mail message to us. There's another advantage to this approach: you can insert questions in brackets or using all capital letters, so that we can easily distinguish between your questions and text. And we can use a similar strategy for inserting comments when we write back to you.
- You may e-mail the Writing Center more than once about the same paper Take the time to read and consider your first set of comments, but let us know if you have more questions that we might be able to help you think through. Always keep in mind that you will get much more out of a thirty minute session by making an appointment to come in person to the Center.
writing.center@und.edu
Good luck with your writing project, and let us know
how we can continue to make our services
more accessible and more helpful for you!
