E-mail a question

E-mail a Question

Beginning in the Fall 2005 semester, the University Writing Center will offer writers another option for getting questions answered: e-mailing the tutors at UWC@my.lamar.edu. Before using this option, please read our e-mail guidelines below.

Guidelines for E-mailing Questions

· While e-mail has certain advantages, we believe the sessions we provide in the Writing Center yield a richer experience for the writer. Therefore, we hope writers will use the e-mail option as a supplement to our sessions rather than a replacement. A good use of the e-mail option would be to ask a question that you forgot to bring up during your session.

· We can answer only specific, narrow questions by e-mail. For example, John writes, "My professor told us not to use second person. I used the word 'we' in one of my sentences. Is 'we' considered second person?" This question does not require the writer to submit his paper to us and is very specific. On the other hand, questions that are too numerous, broad, complex, or that require dialogue between the writer and the tutor will need to be addressed in a face-to-face session in the Writing Center. An example of a question that would require a writer to come in for a session is "Does my thesis match the rest of my paper?" The scope of this question is too broad, and the tutor would need to establish a dialogue with the writer in order to help the writer discover the answer. We reserve the right to determine if your question is an online-answerable question or whether you should schedule a session to meet with a tutor.

· Please do not submit your entire paper to us. You may give us a relevant sentence or two that you are working on if you have a specific question, but if your question requires you to submit an entire paragraph or more, then you would best be served by a face-to-face session in the Writing Center.

· Since our policy is to avoid making evaluations about a writer's work, we cannot answer questions such as "Is this a good topic sentence?" or "What do you think about this paper?" However, we do strive to help writers learn to evaluate their own work; give us a try, and we'll show you how!

· Because our primary service is offering face-to-face sessions to writers in the Writing Center, please keep in mind that we may not have a tutor available to provide instant feedback to your question if the tutors are in a session. Although we do try to answer e-mail as quickly as possible, you will need to allow us at least 24 hours to respond to your e-mail during the week. The Writing Center closes early on Fridays and remains closed during the weekend and for certain holidays, so e-mail sent to us during this time will be checked when we re-open.