Email Submissions - Instructions

Sending a Draft for Comment

Welcome to the Online Writing Center's Email instruction area!
 

Who can receive help via email?
Students who are currently enrolled at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs may submit drafts to the OWL.

When does the Writing Center offer support via email?
Feedback via email is available every semester at UCCS. Writing Center consultants review your request and respond as quickly as possible to your submission; we try to respond within 24 hours but cannot guarantee this turnaround time. If you submit a draft after 5:00 p.m., the consultant will not look at your draft until the following evening.

How can we help you?
We will help with papers from undergraduate through graduate levels, from any discipline, at any stage of the writing process. We can work with students on essays, reports, research papers, book reviews, proposals, personal statements, scholarship or admissions essays, literature reviews, letters, resumes, and selections from drafts-in-progress.

General Feedback: Writing consultants will respond to your papers as engaged readers. They will offer students general comments and in-text comments on areas of particular concern. If students have specific concerns, they should alert the consultant.

Advice with the Process: Many people have difficulty getting started on a writing project. Some have problems generating ideas and content that meet the assignment; others have problems devising a plan for organization. We can give you suggestions about how to proceed before you get frustrated.

Citation and Sentence Style, and Grammar: Consultants are happy to answer specific questions about citation formats (APA, MLA) and sentence style, such as syntax, usage, and mechanics. Send us the puzzling references or sentences along with your questions.

How can't we help you?

Long Papers: Unfortunately, due to the constraints of consulting via email, consultants cannot help with lengthy works, such as dissertations and theses. Please call 255-4336 to make an appointment for face-to-face sessions in the Writing Center for these types of papers or consider sending long papers in six page increments over a period of several days.

Editing: The consultants will not edit your paper for problems with grammar and style. They can point out patterns of error and suggest how you might address these errors, but editing students papers runs counter to our mission to create better writers by instruction.

Who will respond to my writing?

The Writing Center consultants are knowledgeable peers who respond to your writing as interested colleagues. The consultants are majoring in a variety of disciplines and have completed English 480/580, a writing-intensive training course. OWL consultants have had special training in consulting online.

When will I receive a response from a Writing Center Consultant?

Consultants devote 45 minutes to each submission. Depending on the type of submission, they can usually fully review 5-6 pages in this timeframe and return the paper within 24 hours, although actual response time may be longer in periods of high demand.

What kind of response should I expect?

To the greatest extent possible, we will be guided by: 1) the writing concerns that you specify on the submission form accompanying your draft; and 2) our general belief that it makes sense to prioritize higher order concerns related to focus, organization, and idea development before sentence level concerns.

In our response to your draft, we will

• offer direct, honest reader response to guide your thinking and revision
• raise questions for you to consider as you revise
• identify sections in your paper that seem to be working well--and explain why
• offer suggestions about what we see as possible ways to improve your paper
• do our best to answer your questions specifically
  

What can't I expect?

·We cannot edit or rewrite your paper for you because doing so violates our scholarly ethics. We can, however. address your specific questions about academic writing style. Submit your questions or the sentences that puzzle you.

Because we devote only 45 minutes to each draft, we cannot comment on every issue in the paper. Feel free to revise and resubmit up to three times per paper.

We cannot evaluate your paper or predict its grade; only your course instructor is qualified to evaluate your work.