Writing Process

The following resources offer information on the overall process of academic writing, from topic selection to citation and presentation. Resources cover a number of different disciplines, assignment types, and citation styles.

On-Campus Resources

• Writing & Speaking Tutorial Services

  Individual appointments available for undergraduates working on any type of writing. Website includes some online resources plus links to other campus resources for writing.

Online Resources

These sites (many of them from university writing centers) contain materials on a broad range of writing topics. They could be useful either for focusing on specific individual issues or for working on more general skill sets.

• Writing Center Handouts (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

  For good writing advice on specific topics, start here! A collection of handouts covering writing issues and strategies, assignment types, and some specific disciplines.

• Purdue Online Writing Lab (Purdue University)

  A large and popular collection of guides and exercises. Maybe best known for its excellent citation handouts, but OWL also covers all aspects of the writing process, writing in specific disciplines (including engineering), and specific types of writing assignments.

• Writing@CSU (Colorado State University)

  A comprehensive source for materials including interactive online tools for writers, links to open-access textbooks, and guides and activities, plus resources for instructors. Writers can create and save work by creating a login for the site.

• Writer's Web (University of Richmond)

  Another large collection of guides, covering writing in disciplines, aspects of the writing process, and mechanics.

• How to Write a Term Paper (Thompson-Gale Publishing)

  A step-by-step guide to the process of writing a research paper. Focus is largely on choosing a topic, research from sources, and documentation.

Print Resources

• They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (Gerald Graff) -- D. H. Hill Jr. Stacks: PE1431 .G73 2010 (other versions available)

  This book focuses on the ways that academic writing takes place as a conversation among scholars, and provides ways students can improve their writing by entering into those conversations. Presents models of language that can be used to connect your ideas to other people’s.

• Tradition and Adaptation : Writing in the Disciplines (Dean Ward) -- D. H. Hill Jr. Stacks: PE1408 .W3214 2002

  Organized first by broad topics (focus, style, organization, detail, format) and then by disciplinary groupings (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, business), this book can help differentiate among the conventions of writing in different disciplines.

• A Sequence for Academic Writing (Laurence Behrens) -- D. H. Hill Jr. Stacks: PE1408 .B44 2002

  This book focuses largely on specific skills, especially ones having to do with using sources: summary, paraphrase, and quotation; critical reading; synthesis; analysis.

• Making Sense: A Student’s Guide to Research and Writing (Margot Northey) -- D. H. Hill Jr. Stacks: LB2369 .N67 2007

  Covers a range of assignment types, from essays to lab reports to presentations. The same series has books geared more specifically toward writing in engineering, geography and environmental sciences, psychology and life sciences, and social sciences—search the catalog for other titles.

• The Academic Writer’s Handbook (Leonard J. Rosen) -- D. H. Hill Jr. Stacks: PE1408 .R6768 2006

  A broadly comprehensive reference that covers topics from writing processes to use of sources to mechanics to citation.