About the Writing Center
Whether you are a veteran English major, a Philosophy graduate student, or a first year pre-med, the USF Writing Center offers assistance to any student who wants to improve his or her writing skills. Our services are free and available to enrolled students, faculty members, and active staff.
- Regular advance-scheduled, one-on-one consultations are 50 minutes long.
- Students are welcome to make two appointments per week (but never back to back).
- Writing Center Consultants are graduate students from the Departments of English, World Languages, and Communication, all of whom have been writing instructors in addition to working as center consultants.
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Common Writing Errors
Welcome back everyone! To get the spring semester started off, let’s go over five common errors in writing. Keeping these straight will help you improve your writing at any level. Using e.g. instead of i.e. (and vice versa). “i.e.” roughly translates into “that is” or “in other words.” “e.g.” equates to “for example.” Mixing these up can completely alter the meaning of your sentence. Check out th ... more -
Helpful Books for Writing Your Dissertation
Writing a dissertation or thesis can be a daunting task. If you’re looking for some books that may help motivate and focus you, try out a few on this list. The USF Library call number is provided as well, so check a few out! The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers a list as well that you may find helpful during your writing process. http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/tutorials/w ... more -
Tweet to Stay Focused
Do you ever find yourself zoning out while trying to finish your homework? It’s easy to lost focus while trying to get work done outside of the classroom. It’s even harder if that work is in a subject that doesn’t hold our interest. Researchers at Lock Haven University recently completed a study where they asked students to Tweet about the class outside of class time. They found that students stay ... more -
Congratulations to USF’s Oustanding Writing Center Tutors!
Jared White and Trisina Dickerson, two writing consultants from the USF Tampa Writing Center, are the winners of this year’s distinguished Southeastern Writing Center Association’s Professional Tutor of Year Award and Graduate Tutor of the Year Award, respectively. This is an unprecedented accomplishment within the writing center community. The USF Writing Center staff traveled to the SWCA 2012 co ... more -
Writing a Conference Proposal
Many upperclassmen and graduate students strive to take part in conferences and show others the work we’ve been doing. Conferences are a great opportunity to bounce ideas off other experts in your field and get ideas for developing your work. Applying for a conference, however, can be daunting work and many are quite competitive. If you’ve never applied to speak at a conference before, ... more -
Concision
Remember learning all those long, complicated words for the SAT? While it’s good to know what these words mean and how they can be used, using them in our own writing isn’t always a good plan. Sometimes brevity is the best way to express an idea. But why should we bother when we took all that time to learn those long words? Unnecessary words can make us sound like we lack confidence in our writing ... more -
Trying to Avoid Colloquial Language and Slang
“Like, you know, that guy over there told me to say hi.” “Guys and girls! Everyone look here!” “I have to take my kid sister to school, then we can hang out. Slang is everywhere. When we use it in everyday life to communicate with friends informally, it’s usually fine. In fact, sounding too formal around our friends is kinda weird. Slang, or colloquial language – to use the formal term – is not ... more
