Welcome to the Webster University Online Writing Center. Our coaches are qualified staff, faculty and students who will read your paper and make suggestions.

If you wish to submit a paper, carefully follow the instructions below and e-mail all information requested to: writing@webster.edu

Allow one week for the paper to be returned. For papers longer than 15 pages, please allow up to two weeks. Please include the following when you send your paper:

1. A copy of your paper.
2. A complete copy of the assignment that the instructor has given you, or a description of what you have been asked to do in the paper; specify citation format (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).
3. The due date.
4. Course number and title.
5. Instructor's name and email address.
6. Your name, ID number, and year (Fr, So, Jr, Sr, Grad).
7. Your current city of residence, phone number, and (if number is local) a convenient time for a coach to call and discuss the paper (if we need to contact you).
8. Your return e-mail address.
9. Questions and concerns about the paper.
10. Your program/campus: Please indicate if you're in the online MBA program, attending a satellite campus, an extended campus in the St. Louis metro area, or the Webster Groves campus.

Please note: If all this information is not included, we may not be able to comment on and respond to your paper.

* Please CLICK HERE to find out how to send attached documents to the online writing center. NOTE: We may not be able to read your paper if these procedures are not followed.

Please Note:

1. The Writing Center is not a proofreading service. We primarily look at global issues (focus, development, and organization). We mark problems with style and conventions (grammar, formatting, spelling), but you must figure out the precise nature of the problem and make decisions about how you want to revise these problem areas.
2. Especially on longer papers, we will mark only the first few pages for style and conventions. With these marks, we attempt to draw your attention to patterns of problems in your writing.
3. Our hours are Monday through Thursday, 10 AM to 7 PM, and Friday, 10 AM to 4:30 PM, Central Time. Consequently we are not here over the weekend and cannot respond to papers on Saturday or Sunday.

Coaches will then do the following:

1. Read your paper.
2. Comment on global issues (focus, development, organization) and mark style and conventions problems.
3. Ask questions about the assignment.
4. Ask questions about the paper.
5. Make suggestions **[in brackets]**.
6. Return your paper via e-mail.

Send a report to your instructor informing her or him about our commenting (please indicate if you would prefer for us to not send such a report to your instructor).

Upon receipt of the paper, you may do any of the following:

1. Respond to questions and suggestions via e-mail
2. Revise the paper and resubmit it (please be aware of due dates and our turn-around time)
3. Keep the paper and revise it to hand in.

• All attached documents sent to the Online Writing Center should be in RTF ("Rich Text Format")!
  
  
• To save your document to RTF, first save it normally with Word, WordPerfect, Clarisworks, or any other word processing program.
  
  
• Then choose SAVE AS from the FILE menu. Somewhere in the dialog box for SAVE AS, there will be an option for "file type," "file format," document type," or something similar.
  
  
• Change this dialog box option to RTF. RTF is something listed as "Rich Text" or "Microsoft RTF."
  
  
• Complete the SAVE AS procedure after changing that option. You will now have a newly saved document. It is strongly recommended that the user add the characters ".rtf" to the end of the file's name to differentiate it from the normal version saved previously.
  
  
• Finally, compose your e-mail message as usual, click on the ATTACH icon (or choose ATTACH FILE from the FILE menu), select the RTF version of the file you saved, and send it off to the Writing Center writing@webster.edu

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