In order for us to serve you as quickly as possible, please submit your draft using the form linked at the bottom of this page.Do not send your draft as an email attachment. Drafts that are submitted as attachments will be returned unread.
Response Time
Tutors will respond to your submission within 48 hours, as a rule. If you send us a paper on Friday afternoon, we can't retrieve it until Monday morning, and you may not hear from us until Tuesday, depending on how busy we are. Also, mid-term and end-of-the-semester are busy times. We may not be able to respond to your submission so quickly then. But otherwise, we usually are able to respond the same day we receive your e-mail.
The Writing Lab's summer hours for the Pre Session (May 15 – June 5) are Monday – Thursday 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM, and for the Regular Session (June 11 – August 1) are Monday – Thursday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM. If you send us a paper on Thursday afternoon, we can't retrieve it until Monday morning, and you may not hear from us until Tuesday, depending on how busy we are.
Draft Length
As a rule of thumb, we ask that you limit online submissions to about 2000 words. If your draft is lengthy and complex, you should come to the Writing Lab for a face-to-face conference. Longer papers can be handled online, but turn around time will be longer, and some issues may still require face-to-face assistance.
Graduate Students: For assistance with a major paper (e.g., a master's thesis), please call us at 573-651-2159 and set up an appointment for a face-to-face conference.
Directions
On the submission page, you will be requested to write to the tutor (in the box provided), telling him or her what questions and concerns you have about your draft. The checklist below may help you determine what you want the tutor to focus on.
- Is the main idea (thesis) or purpose clear?
- Does anything need further explanation or description? Or is there something that doesn't seem relevant and should be omitted? If you are arguing a point, have you made a convincing case? Does the paper achieve the purpose you have in mind?
- Is the paper effectively organized? Are the supporting ideas or sections or stages clearly separate? Are they in the most effective order? Would the paper be easy to outline?
- Is there a sentence or passage that might confuse the reader?
- Is there a technical matter (in punctuation, grammar, word choice, documentation style, or something else) you are unsure about?
You will receive a response to your draft within 24 hours, usually sooner, barring some unforeseen computer glitch. The Writing Lab personnel do not work on online submissions in the evenings or on weekends so a response will be delayed if you send a draft late on Friday or during the weekend. Please allow yourself adequate time to revise after receiving a response and before the final draft is due.