In this learning area, you will learn how to develop an argumentative essay and stronger critical thinking skills. This learning area will help you develop your arguments, understand your audience, evaluate source material, approach arguments rhetorically, and avoid logical fallacies. Here, you’ll also learn about evaluating other arguments and creating digital writing projects related to your argument.

We know you have come to this tutorial because you are a serious writer who wants to write well — and correctly! You have probably heard the word plagiarism and would like to understand it better. You have come to the right place. In this tutorial, you’ll learn:

What plagiarism is
How to recognize seven different kinds of plagiarism
The correct way to use ‘open access’ materials
The consequences of plagiarism
How to avoid plagiarism by doing the following:
Citing sources correctly
Recognizing ‘common knowledge’
Writing good paraphrases
Writing good summaries
Taking careful notes

Here you’ll find extensive support for APA, MLA, and Chicago documentation styles. This section features instructional videos that show you how to set up your papers in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats, interactive checklists, and visual support for both in-text documenting and referencing at the end of your paper. If you’re new to documentation or just need a refresher, the Citations & Documentation area can help.

This is a great question you might be asking yourself, and if you’re not asking it, you probably should be. If you are a native speaker of English, you don’t even have to think about it to use grammar correctly, at least for the most part. If you have ever watched a child develop language, you know that, at a very young age, children know what is necessary for language to make sense.

While essays and research papers are likely the most common types of writing assignments you’ll receive in college, more and more, students are being expected to write in digital environments. In the 21st century, you’re likely to be asked to create a PowerPoint or Prezi to present the main points of your research paper, or you may be asked to create an electronic portfolio to share all of your work for a semester. Students in online classes will write discussion board posts every week, and some professors are even replacing some of your traditional essay assignments with assignments like photo essays or video essays.

In this learning area, you will find step-by-step support for writing a research paper (a paper with source material) for your college courses. In Research, the Excelsior OWL will help you as you begin to write your paper, pick a topic, conduct research for articles and books, draft your work, integrate your research, and revise and edit your finished paper.

In the Rhetorical Styles area of the Excelsior OWL, you’ll learn about different rhetorical styles or, essentially, different strategies for developing your essays and other writing assignments. These basic strategies are not all encompassing but will provide you with a foundation and a flexibility to help you as you engage in writing assignments in your introductory writing classes and beyond.

Have you ever received a writing assignment, thought “this won’t take long” and then stayed up all night writing the night before your assignment was due because it ended up taking a lot longer than you thought it would? If you have, you’re not alone. Many beginning writers struggle to plan well when it comes to a writing assignment, and this results in writing that is just not as good as it could be. When you wait until the last minute and fail to engage in a good writing process, you’re not doing your best work—even if you did “get all A’s in high school” as a procrastinator. In this step-by-step support area, you will find everything you need to know about writing a paper from start to finish.

This resource offers self-paced modules that will help you review key topics in writing. Each module provides instruction followed by review questions. The modules can be completed individually or in sequence. After completing a module, you have the option to download or print a completion report to share with a tutor, instructor, or save for posterity!

The teaching of writing in colleges and universities tends to focus on academic essays and research papers. Writing in the disciplines, on the other hand, refers to writing assignments tailored to the genres of a specific discipline or field. For instance, a science course might require students to write a lab report, while a sociology course might assign a case study.