Welcome to Writing Commons, the home for writers.  

Our primary goal is to provide the resources and community students need to improve their writing, particularly students enrolled in courses that require college-level writing.  We believe learning materials should be free for all students and teachers–part of the cultural commons.  Hence, we provide free access to an award-winning, college textbook that was published by a major publisher and awarded the Distinguished Book Award by Computers and Composition: an International Journal.  

Writing Process

Learn how to improve your ability to develop effective writing habits, thinking rhetorically, organize, focus, invent, format, revise,edit, and publish .  Understand when to play the believing game versus the doubting game.  Adopt the working habits and attitudes of effective writers.

Information Literacy

Learn how to analyze texts, images, and new media by approaching them with a critical lens. Become a more active, engaged reader by annotating and summarizing texts.

Research Process

Consult the Research Primer to understand why different professions and academic discipines use divergent research methods. Learn the conventions of textual research especially for guidelines of evaluating, citing, and summarizing sources. Explore empirical research methods, including surveys, ethnographies, and informed consent.

Collaboration

 Collaborating is an integral component of writing. Writers develop their best ideas by discussing issues with colleagues, by researching others' ideas, and by exchanging comments about one another's documents.

Genres

Understand the genres employed by writers in three communities: Creative Writing, Academic Writing, Professional Writing

Style

Consult the style handbook for articles on style and grammar as well as new media content that treats style in engaging and innovative ways.

New Media

Images, video, sound, hyperlinks, social media--these are some of the features that distinguish new media genres from traditional print texts that have been published online. To be classified as "new media writing," a text needs to break free from the boundaries of text-based prose.

Please see Contribute if  you wish to collaborate with this project.  Our distinguished Editorial Board is eager to work with you to produce a new kind of writing resource, one that employs new media and more interactive features to better meet students' needs. Please visit our Guide for Authors page as well when composing for Writing Commons.