Welcome to the Guide to Writing at Stetson University!

This guide is designed for students and faculty to use as a resource for what “good college writing” looks like—and how students can achieve it—and how faculty can encourage it. Our primary audience is student who has just joined Stetson's ranks, but this guide can be helpful for writers at any level. Our mission for this guide is to support students in developing writing strategies: an awareness of differing audience needs, the importance of paraphrasing and summarizing, the particular needs of students speaking English as an additional language, the mechanics of sentences and paragraphs, and much more.

Initially written in 2010 by Dr. Megan O'Neill, the Director of Writing and the Core Academic Experience, this guide has been reshaped from its original printed format to the new online version that you see here. In the summer of 2018, Writing Center Director Leigh Ann Dunning, with help from writing tutors Jeanette Jakupca, Aiyanna Maciel, Amber Biron, and Tya Saunders strategized new ways to present useful information to students online.

This online edition of the Guide to Writing at Stetson will include the following features:

• easily navigable sections dedicated to writing and research
• internal hyperlinks to useful resources at Stetson & beyond
• visual images and links to multimedia
• advice from peer tutors about their writing at Stetson

Since writing and research go hand-in-hand, we've included an updated “Research and Information Fluency” section. This section details ways for students to utilize the resources offered to them by the duPont-Ball Library. Students who need additional information or assistance should stop by the duPont-Ball Library.

The Writing Center website offers additional resources, references, and revision ideas for all students at Stetson. We invite you to experience working collaboratively with a peer tutor by making an appointment via Stetson SSC.

If you are interested in the overall mission of the Writing Program at Stetson or need more information about the writing-enhanced requirement, visit the Writing Program website.

Good writing takes time, diligence, and attention to detail. It also takes a certain amount of initiative from the student; learning to write well is not and cannot be a passive process. Each course that includes writing will benefit you as a writer if you seize the moment.

Wishing you all the best this semester!

 - Megan O'Neill and Leigh Ann Dunning, Directors of the Writing Program and the Writing Center