Quick Guides and Handouts

Writing happens in four key phases: brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing. Read our quick guide to the process.

You don’t know what you don’t know. Many aspects of writing are often overlooked when revising, like over use of passive voice. Read our handout on common concerns. 

Writing can be slow and unproductive, especially in the face of looming deadlines. Learn about how to write more effectively in our quick advice guide.

Growth mindset is the belief that our qualities and
capacities to learn/grow are something we cultivate over
time through our efforts, strategies, and help from
others. Learn about growth mindset.

While we all know writing last-minute is often stressful, unproductive, and results in lower-quality writing, how can we write more consistently? Learn about sustainable writing habits.

Sometimes when we’re writing a thesis-driven essay, it can be hard to tell if what we’re writing is really analysis or summary. Check out this chart to improve your analysis and summary skills.

Writing a thesis statement is often the most difficult and most important part of argumentative writing. Learn some quick tips. 

Specific assignments call for specific thesis statements; knowing what points to include for a thesis in a research essay or a literary analysis is challenging. Read this quick guide to creating these types of thesis statements!

Titles engage our readers by informing what our work will be about, clarifying the relevance of our work for others’ research, compelling their curiosity and interest in our work. Read our writing strong titles handout!

In order to have our writing be as clear as possible, our topic sentences must be specific, purposeful, and connected to our thesis. Read more about connecting these elements.

Striking a balance between different sentence types is an effective way to create interesting, compelling writing in our papers. Learn how to vary your sentences.

Paraphrasing, summarizing, and using quotes are all
ways of integrating external source material into your essay. Review these three fundamental skills.

One way to think of synthesis is making meaningful, thoughtful connections between your sources or perspectives on a topic. Learn about synthesis and how to improve making connections.

Commas are valuable punctuation used to separate elements of a sentence and add clarity to your ideas. View our comma guide.

Prepositions are words or clauses preceding nouns, noun phrases, or pronouns to show time, direction, place/location, and spatial relationships within a sentence. View our prepositions handout.

Let’s take a closer look at the three common tenses to
understand when we should use them. View our tenses guide.