- What is the Writing Center?
The Writing Center is an academic center supported by the Department of English and the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences for students to come to work on their writing. Students must be enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh in order to register for an appointment. Our staff, which includes faculty and undergraduate peer tutors, have been trained to help others with their writing.
Other Pitt affiliates, such as faculty and staff, are also welcome to use the Writing Center.
You can get support on academic, professional, and creative writing. Our consultants can help with writing for traditional or digital media.
- When should I go to the Writing Center?
At any stage of the writing process, even if you need help understanding a prompt or getting started. Here are some types of questions that writers may have that we can help with:
- Will what I've written make sense to my audience?
- Have I done what the assignment asks me to do?
- Are there parts that are unclear?
- Have I left something important unsaid or included too much?
- How do I give credit to the sources I've used?
- How do I credit AI?
- Have I relied too heavily on AI?
- Have I caught most of my grammar mistakes?
- How can I revise my writing given the comments my instructor has made?
A consultant at the Writing Center can help you find the answers to these and other questions when you are writing. Keep in mind that the consultant's role is to provide support and guidance, not to correct your whole paper or write it for you. Ultimately, you need to be responsible for your writing. The success of every appointment depends on the conversation and collaboration.
- What should I expect when I go to the Writing Center?
A judgement free zone! We know how frustrating writing can be. There are no grades, no homework, and no grammar drills at the Writing Center (unless you want them)! You will be asked to explain why you've come to the Center, what sort of paper you're working on, and when it is due. Then you and the consultant will discuss your concerns as well as any added suggestions that the consultant might have.
- What if I don't have anything written yet?
Come to the Writing Center with whatever you have: notes, scribbles, ideas, worries. You and your consultant can work from where you are to where you want to be.
- Other than the times listed, does the Writing Center ever close?
The Writing Center is closed when DSAS classes are not meeting: Fall break; finals week; between terms; Spring break; Juneteenth; July 4th; Thanksgiving week; Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and other holidays.
- How do I arrange to speak with a Writing Center consultant?
You can make an appointment by visiting our online scheduler and selecting the schedule for the current term. You can choose a 25-minute or 55-minute appointment. You may book up to 2.5 hours of appointments per week but only one appointment per day. Using multiple identities to book additional times is a violation of academic integrity.
- How can the Writing Center help me learn to edit and proofread my writing?
If you do decide to come to us near the end of your writing process, when you are ready to start editing and proofreading, we can help you identify inconsistencies in your writing that you can look for when you edit on your own. We can also teach you some helpful proofreading strategies (for example did you know that some editors find it helpful to start proofreading at the end of a paper and read sentence by sentence until they reach the beginning?). And we can explain concepts or issues that may have hindered your readers in the past. For example, if your readers have told you that you have trouble with coherence, transitions, development, or specific mechanical issues (like using commas or semicolons effectively), we can help you understand what that means when it comes to your words on the page.
At the beginning of each session, you can set goals for the work you and your consultant are going to do. If you have trouble, for instance, with idiomatic phrases or with commas, and you state this at the beginning, the tutor will be able to identify and focus on errors in the draft that fit this description, provide some tips on preventing or correcting such errors, and give you feedback on your own efforts to correct such errors.
It runs counter to the Writing Center's mission for a tutor to simply find and correct as many errors as they can locate during the session. So we are not likely to work with you through every line of a paper; we are more likely to work with you on a couple of areas and then ask you to try editing or proofreading the rest yourself. If you wish, you can always come back later to the same consultant or another one to see how your abilities are growing and to define some new areas to work on. We work with some students throughout their time here at Pitt.
Please visit us and see for yourself how we can help you learn more about your writing.