Welcome to the UD Writing Lab!

The Writing Lab will be open this fall beginning on September 7, 2023.

The Writing Lab continues to offer both in-person and online sessions! All sign-ups are online. 

Sign Up for an Appointment

***When signing up, please make sure that your UD EMAIL ADDRESS is displayed in the upper-right-hand corner of the appointments calendar. This will ensure that the time zones of your calendar and ours are synchronized.

IN-PERSON appointment sign up

For in-person sessions, meet your tutor in Braniff 304 (or possibly in Braniff 332 when two tutors are offering evening hours). 

                          ***NOTE: YOU MAY ONLY SIGN UP FOR ONE SLOT PER PAPER PER DAY***

ONLINE appointment sign up

For online sessions, meet your tutor in the Zoom meeting via the link in the Google calendar event 1-2 minutes before the designated time.

                         ***NOTE: YOU MAY ONLY SIGN UP FOR ONE SLOT PER PAPER PER DAY***

If you are having trouble signing up for a Writing Lab session, please email the Writing Lab at writinglab@udallas.edu or the Writing Lab Director, Susan E. Matassa at sematassa@udallas.edu. 

For further instructions regarding both on-campus and online appointments, see below.

Tutoring Hours of Operation

Sunday: 6:00-10:00pm

Monday:  11:00am-10:00pm

Tuesday:  10:00am-10:00pm

Wednesday:  10:00am-10:00pm

Thursday:  10:00am-10:00pm

Friday: 11am-3:00pm

Saturday:  Closed

What is the Writing Lab?

The Writing Lab exists to help students improve their mastery of the skills of composition — invention, organization, and style. At the Lab, we want to help students become better writers by attending, together, to the crafting of specific papers. Focusing primarily on the student’s development, we neither edit nor proof-read papers; instead, we aim to help the students discern areas for improvement, and to guide them into the next stage of that growth. All the tutors in the lab are graduate students here at UD. We welcome papers of all kinds, not just Lit Trad papers; we work with students on papers from across the Core, including scientific writing, as well as on applications to various scholarships and programs.

General Guidelines for Any Visit to the Writing Lab 

Important Note: In order to maximize this time, please complete the "Upload your documents" step and the "Sign in" step listed below BEFORE your session begins. 

Appointment Guidelines

• Sign up:  For an online session, pick a slot in the "Writing Lab Online" Google appointment calendar here.  For an in-person session in Braniff 304, pick a slot in the "Writing Lab In-Person" Google appointment calendar here.
• Upload your documents: Send copies of your documents to writinglab@udallas.edu. To streamline your session, complete this step BEFORE your session begins. Give your documents unique, recognizable names, such as your last name and the date of your session. You need to share: 
  • Your paper (the most recent draft!)
  • The prompt for your paper (if you have it)
• Sign in: Follow this link to sign in. To make your session as efficient as possible, please complete this step BEFORE your session begins.
• Come: at the time you signed up for.
  • If making an in-person visit, bring either a laptop or a hard copy of your paper to the session so that you and your tutor can see the same words, punctuation, formatting, etc. Also provide a copy of your paper prompt.  
  • For an online session, open the invitation to the Zoom video conference you will have received in your inbox. 
  • If you are 10 or more minutes late to your appointment, an appointment is not guaranteed. 
  • Please note that your session's fruitfulness will correspond to your own preparedness. So please come with specific questions about your draft or outline, and prepare yourself to think and learn about the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Your tutor will not create a thesis for you (that would constitute plagiarism!) or provide your provisional thesis with textual argumentation. Instead, he or she will help you to develop your thoughts about the subject as you present it in your paper.
  • Your session is only 25 minutes long. Due to the conversational nature of this kind of learning, you should NOT expect to work through an entire paper in one session. Instead, you are more likely to focus intently upon a few areas of improvement. 
• No shows: if for any reason you cannot make the session you signed up for, cancel the Google Meet appointment on your Calendar. If you have not done so half an hour before your session was scheduled to start, and you fail to come, that will be counted as a no show. Any student who has three no shows in a semester without reasonable notification could be banned from the Lab for the rest of the semester.

General Writing Lab Rules

1.  Undergraduates are limited to one 25 minute slot per day per assignment.

2.  Tutors are not allowed to edit, review, or critique take-home, out-of-class exams without the written consent of the exam-giving instructor.

3.  Tutors will comment on grammar, syntax, organization, and/or argumentation of the draft presented.  Their task is to show where the paper needs to improve, not to re-write the paper.  For that reason, tutors will point out consistent errors in grammar and syntax, but not correct them all.  Similarly, tutors will point out problems with evidence use or information flow, but they will not generate the paper's argument, evidence, or information. 

Should you have any questions regarding the Lab, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Director:

Ms. Susan E. Matassa
Adjunct Instructor of English and Writing Lab Director
Writing Lab: Braniff 304
Email:  sematassa@udallas.edu

 Writing Lab Resources 

Marking Guide with links to explanations of Common Errors and exercises to help you correct those errors.