Reference
Texts
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NOTE:
Any individual wishing to download and use the materials available on these sites should first contact the OWL administrator for permission. Many of these documents have been copyrighted or otherwise declared the intellectual property of the originating schools and cannot legally be used by other institutions without such permission.
Bemidji State University Writing Resource Center
This quirky site nonetheless offers the visitor solid resources. The table of contents, for example, uses headings such as "The Sofa: Check out how we run things in our WRC workroom," "The Bulb: Grab your jumper cables and this will lead you to a mental jumpstart," and "The File: Our collection of online materials to help you and your writing." Each section offers a valuable link to writing help.
Bowling Green State University On Line Writing Lab
Offers not only lots of online assistance on grammar and composition but also a scholarly "General Writing References" section and a link to the WWW Scholarship Server. This OWL promises to respond to student questions within 24 hours and links to advice concerning good student-teacher conferences as well as to more traditional kinds of composition support.
Carnegie Mellon: The English Server
Not exactly an online writing center, but rather a cooperative that collects and distributes documents as well as provides helpful resources for writers and teachers. For example, there are sections for "storing and sharing" and for "reading and research" and links to online magazines such as Cultronix, a journal of art and cultural theory. The site also offers telnet, FTP, gopher, and bulletin board opportunities.
Clemson's Bread Loaf School of English Educational Resources
Foregrounds student writing in interesting ways, as with the "Writing for the World" page, which emphasizes "student writing for and on the Internet." Excellent resources for teachers and students appear in a clearly annotated and ranked listing of links to writing process help and grammar, as well as to places to publish on the Web and sites about electronic communication.
Colgate's National Writing Centers Association OnLine
Offers a comprehensive directory of online writing centers as well as indexes to sites that provide handouts, online tutoring, and grammar hotlines.
John Hewitt's Writer's Resource Center
This award-winning site is chock full of links about being a student of writing and about being a writer. Hewitt has cataloged links about fiction writing, software for writers, journalism, literary magazines, writers' markets, and much more. Although not affiliated with an educational institution, the site offers plenty of resources on activities such as journal and essay writing.
Purdue University
Online Writing Lab
One of the original online writing labs, Purdue's center offers more than 120 handouts on every conceivable topic associated with college-level writing. The OWL provides special teaching resources for instructors and students dealing with writing across the curriculum, ESL issues, and business writing (including résumé writing). Visitors interested in more WWW research can link to a list of search tools. In addition, the site provides a bibliography of OWL scholarship.
Roane
State Community College Online Writing Lab
Provides more than 30 links to documents produced by the college and sorted into two main categories: "Composition, Documentation, Research" and "Editing, Grammar, Punctuation." The materials include student papers. A special section on "Nursing: Home Health and Transition Papers" covers APA documentation. Other links lead to an annotated list of other OWLs, online dictionaries and grammar texts, scholarship on issues related to online writing, and job links.
SUNY Empire State College Writer's Complex
Designed as a complex of rooms, each holding a different writing workshop. Each workshop offers a tutorial complete with examples, and many provide interactive exercises. When possible, students are given a detailed response as to why an answer fits or does not fit the correct parameters. For example, in an exercise requiring students to choose the best thesis statement, they will find an analysis of each incorrect response as well as an explanation of the logic behind the best thesis. Some interactive materials are unavailable to students not registered with Empire State College (SUNY's virtual college).
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is partners with Roane State Community College in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the Cyberspace Writing Center Consultation Project. This pilot project offers users the experience of MOOing as well as connecting them to a site for more common OWL resources.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Writers' Workshop
Includes an excellent online handbook in three hyperlinks ("The Grammar Handbook," "The Writing Techniques Handbook," and "The Bibliography Styles Handbook"), plus a linked list of "Best Web Sites for Writers" and an annotated linked list of "Web-Based Self-Help for Writers."
University of Minnesota Department of Rhetoric Online Writing Center
Designed as a virtual writing center, with an interface that replicates a suite of offices, each devoted to a specific area, from skills building to chat interaction. The lobby houses a filing cabinet of handouts. The chat room allows non-University of Minnesota visitors to log on as guests. An interactive grammar skills test is available via the Grammar Oracle in the Skills Center office.
University of Richmond Writer's Web
Offers an original online handbook with detailed, step-by-step information on the writing process, from drafting to focusing to self- and peer-editing papers. The site also has sections on documenting and effectively using sources.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Online Writing Center
The site's whimsical interface reveals links to extensive materials on all areas of the writing process: grammar, research, peer review, varying types of academic writing, documentation styles from MLA to Chicago, and more. The OWC offers annotated, thematically organized links to other "hot" OWLs. It is also one of the few sites to offer an automatic update email service: Once provided with an email address, it will alert a user whenever the site is revised.
Washington State University Online Writing Lab
Washington State University Online Writing Lab
WSU students and nonstudents alike can share their writing and respond to the writing of others via the site's interactive, threaded discussion-list format. Primarily a venue for discussing posted papers, the site also offers a short, rated list of other OWLs and online resources. This is one of the few sites to consistently accord nonstudents the same level of rights as students.
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