student writing support
online resources
avoiding plagiarism
How to Recognize Plagiarism: A Tutorial
A comprehensive resource from Indiana University’s School of Education, this website defines plagiarism in depth and provides strategies for recognizing and avoiding it, including examples, practice exercises, and an online self-test with confirmation certificate for those who pass.
Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources
Writers with the best of intentions nonetheless do not always know whether to quote or to paraphrase sources, and how to do so appropriately. This comprehensive resource from the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison helps writers address this common problem.
QuickStudy: Citing Sources
This resource from the U of M Libraries defines accidental plagiarism and offers tips for avoiding it.
“What are you telling your readers?” (pdf)
This handout approaches citation from a reader’s perspective. Writers can use this resource as a crib sheet to assess whether they are accurately communicating who deserves credit for the words and ideas in their texts.
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documenting sources
Research and Documentation Online
From Bedford/St. Martin’s Press and Diana Hacker, everything you need to know about citing every kind of source, whether in the humantities, social sciences, history, or sciences. Includes sample papers in MLA, APA, and Chicago formats, as well as sample pages from a CSE paper.
Citing Electronic Sources
This resource from the Library of Congress offers instructions on citing electronic sources in MLA and Chicago styles (and provides examples using items from the Library’s own collections).
Citing Electronic Sources in APA style
This portion of the Purdue OWL offers the APA-specific help unavailable on the Library of Congress site, above.
new! The Chicago Manual of Style Online
Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Libraries, access to the complete online version of the Chicago Manual of Style for U of MN students, faculty, and staff.
planning & completing a writing project Assignment Calculator
Students can use this tool to break down any assignment for any course into manageable steps. After entering a due date and the academic department in which their course is being offered, users are given a series of suggested stages and deadlines to follow as they complete the assignment—the newest version of this tool will even provide email reminders if students request it.
This tool was developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries in collaboration with the Center for Writing and the Center for Teaching and Learning Services.
Dissertation Calculator
This online tool
from the University of Minnesota helps students navigate the process
of writing a dissertation. The Dissertation Calculator breaks down the process into manageable stages with
suggested deadlines, and provides students with important resources and advice
tailored to the University context.
This tool was created by the Center for Writing in partnership
with the University Libraries, Center for Teaching and Learning Services, and
the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy.
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applying for schools, scholarships, & jobs
Writing a Personal Statement for Graduate School
From the career center at the University of California–Berkeley, step-by-step advice on planning and writing what is arguably the most important portion of any graduate or professional school application.
Guided Brainstorming Exercises for the Personal Statement
This online tutorial from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Writing Center helps writers to generate ideas for their personal statements. Writers can answer the brainstorming questions online, then have their responses emailed to themselves for further use in their drafts.
Resume Development
The U of M’s Carlson School of Management explains the conventions and features of common types of resumes, and provides links to samples and other resume-writing resources.
new! CVs, Cover Letters, and Teaching Portfolios (pdf)
From Stanford University, brief advice on the academic job application process followed by a rich collection of sample CVs from the Humanities, Education, and Science/Engineering, along with sample cover letters for jobs and postdocs.
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writing a grant proposal
Proposal Writing Short Course
From The Foundation Center, the nationally-known organization devoted to helping nonprofit organizations find appropriate grantmakers, this resource outlines and defines the components of a proposal and suggests what to include in each section.
Guide for Writing a Funding Proposal
This detailed guide enumerates the sections of a funding proposal and provides both writing advice and examples of a final product. Users can select separate sections or download pdfs of the whole site.
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writing for special types of assignments
Writing an Annotated Bibliography
From the OWL at Purdue, an online resource that offers definitions and information on format, content, and style of annotated bibliographies. Includes examples of entries using MLA, APA, and Chicago style formats.
Writing a Literature Review
From the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a definition of a literature review, along with step-by-step advice on organization.
Writing Rhetorical Analysis
From the University of Georgia Writing Center, a concise online introduction to ethos, pathos, and logos (the Rhetorical Triangle).
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new! writing a dissertation
The Graduate School Writer’s Nexus
A comprehensive resource from the University Graduate School that offers help with writing and research, information on funding, and support for international students.
Writing and Presenting Your Thesis Or Dissertation
This comprehensive guide from Michigan State’s Dr. S. Joseph Levine offers both practical and comforting advice to make the process of writing a dissertation—from preparing to write the proposal to writing the dissertation itself to handling the defense—more manageable, and even (on one’s best days) exciting.
How to Organize Your Thesis
This advice from Carleton University (Ottawa) computer science professor John W. Chinneck is widely generalizable across the disciplines. Not only does Chinneck offer a clear basic outline for a dissertation, but he helps writers conceptualize the project of a dissertation in the first place (see section entitled “What Graduate Research Is All About”).
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learning English grammar and usage
Thesaurus.com
This site
compiles entries from several thesauri to provide synonyms and antonyms for any word a user enters. Each word the thesaurus suggests is itself hyperlinked to other related words, and writers can take the important step of looking up their selected words in the dictionary portion of the site before choosing which best reflects their intended meaning.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Online
An invaluable resource for learners of English, this dictionary provides information on which words take articles and on what prepositions to use, and it provides several sample phrases and sentences to help writers check usage.
note: this resource is best viewed in Firefox.
Cambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs
This resource can help English language learners determine what verb/preposition combination to use in order to denote different meanings. To see some of the features of this dictionary, users might explore the entries for “work” and for “write.”
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Online
A resource that helps with usage more than with definitions, this dictionary provides users with context for their word choices. To see how this dictionary works best, look up the word “fire.”
new! Valuing Written Accents: Non-Native Students Talk about Identity, Academic Writing, and Meeting Teachers’ Expectations (pdf)
From the Diversity Research Group at George Mason University, an in-depth look at international students’ experiences writing in English for academic audiences.
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