We look forward to responding to your drafts. We ask that you please read the following Response Policy before submitting a draft to learn how to best use our services:

Please register before submitting drafts.

You need to register only once for the school year.

Allow for 72 hours response time (our tutors are students too who, like you, have classes and deadlines.)

Drafts are accepted only Monday - Thursday (our tutors need weekend time for their own work and other activities).

Drafts submitted after noon on Thursday, and all drafts submitted Friday through Sunday, will be considered Monday submissions (again, because tutors also need weekends to study and have time for other activities).

If you do not receive a response to your draft after 72 hours of submission, feel free to email us at writelab@eou.edu. 

Please note that sometimes our firewall will stop a submission because of words it flags in the subject line or in your Spam file. Your draft simply will not get through. 

If you are writing a Capstone or other longer document, you need to submit the draft in parts (max. 7 pages).  Submit early so that there is time for a tutor to respond to all parts by your deadline.

Again, please feel free to contact us if you have questions:  writelab@eou.edu

Response Policy

v     The Writing Lab serves to provide writing resources for EOU students and faculty, and to provide online writing responses to drafts submitted by eligible EOU students. At present our Online Writing Lab (OWL) services are for online students only.  On-campus students are encouraged to use the on-campus Writing Lab located on the second floor of Loso Hall because face-to-face tutoring is the most effective choice when it is available.

v     Research shows that good writers rarely work in isolation, but instead seek responses to works-in-progress. Writers learn best by writing, talking, and getting feedback on their writing, and then rewriting and revising.  We are here to provide student writers feedback at each point their writing process, from getting started, to finding a focus, developing ideas, improving organization, or helping writers to find and correct their own errors.

v     Writing tutors, both online and on-campus, are trained to comment first on conceptual and structural issues ("macro" or "global issues") before they comment on conventions and correctness ("micro" or "local issues").  Consequently, student writers might expect that the tutor's comments will primarily be about the focus of the piece, the supporting details, and organization. 

v     Tutors will comment on issues of convention and correctness (spelling, grammar, punctuation) if there are obvious patterns of error, but they will not correct students' essays for them.  It is important to understand that the Writing Lab is not setup to be an editing or proofreading service.  The writer owns the paper, and the tutor is only a part of a writer's process. 

v     Our goal is to make better writers who can develop a process that will lead to good writing, and to help student writers learn how to improve their own drafts. 

v     Students, and the faculty for whom they write, should have reasonable expectations of what a writing tutor can accomplish in a half-hour session.

v     Please allow 72 hours for a response.  

YOU MUST REGISTER BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR FIRST DRAFT. After registering once, you do not need to register again. Un-registered students' drafts will be returned without response.

Allow for 72 hours response time.

Drafts are accepted only Monday - Thursday.

Drafts submitted after noon on Thursday, and all drafts submitted Friday through Sunday, will be considered Monday submissions (Tutors are students too who need weekends to study).

NEW USERS CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

(Please note that when you do receive a response, sometimes the computer will translate some punctuation, such as apostrophes and quotation marks, into code/numbers. The document is still readable. You just need to ignore the numbers.)

If you do not receive a response to your draft after 72 hours of submission, feel free to email us at writelab@eou.edu. 

Please note that sometimes our firewall will stop a submission because of words it flags in the subject line or in your draft, and we will have no way of knowing if this has happened.  Your draft simply will not get through.  Note too that sometimes our responses may have been sent to your Spam folder, so check there too.

Again, please feel free to contact us if you have questions:  writelab@eou.edu

Click here to Submit a First Draft (First draft sent to the OWL, but not necessarily your first draft)

Click here to Submit a Revised Draft

 How are we doing?  Click here to give us feedback:  OWL Feedback Form