The University of Texas, of course, has fantastic online writing resources available through the UWC, but other university writing centers also offer sites worth a look. Undergraduates might find The Writer’s Handbook for the Writing Center of the University of Wisconsin, Madison (http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/index.html) particularly useful.

The homepage presents these five different topics for further exploration: Stages of the Writing Process, Common Types of Writing Assignments, Grammar and Punctuation, Improving Your Writing Style, and Citing References in Your Paper. If used properly, this site could easily replace a grammar handbook, particularly because it offers detailed information about a number of common citation styles.

Students looking for grammar help would most likely click on the Grammar and Punctuation Link. Not only does this child page offer detailed and clearly organized help with usage of common sentence elements (conjunctive adverbs, coordinating conjunctions, semicolons, commas, dashes), but it also gives tips on subject-verb agreement, offers students pragmatic advice on “How to Proofread,” and features a twelve-step editing checklist. When pointing out rules, the site presents a great deal of information, such as detailed explanations, and examples—both good and bad—of sentences incorporating the element in question.

Best of all, the site teaches students how to critique and edit their own writing. Certainly when revising a graded draft, any student can look up rules related to problems an instructor has already indicated. But this site encourages students to develop the skills to recognize such problems preemptively in their own writing. The step-by-step advice it gives on proofreading should reinforce the views of most professors, yet many undergraduates may not have heard these tricks and tips before.

Another plus is that the site provides much information a student would get from a visit to a writing center, especially in the sections describing the writing process and common assignment formats. Students who use these resources and find them helpful might be more inclined to visit a writing center personally and would be more likely to know what kind of help to ask for there.

On the child page dedicated to citation, the section on Quoting and Paraphrasing contains much useful information about recognizing and avoiding plagiarism. Instructors might even be able to incorporate the site’s plagiarism materials into a class activity.

Easy to navigate and understand, the site has few drawbacks. In some cases, the ample material on how to approach a particular type of writing assignment (i.e., a book review) may conflict with the instructor’s own vision of the finished product. As long as instructors make their expectations clear, however, this issue should not prove too problematic.