This hub will help you develop effective writing skills by showing you how to plan, structure, and revise your writing. Each unit covers different aspects of the writing process that will help you complete your assignments well.
Our Writing Support Specialist can help you with things like essay organization, editing strategies, thesis statements, integrating quotes, and more.
We also host writing workshops throughout the term. These are focused lectures and activities covering various aspects of essay writing, such as breaking essays into manageable pieces, rules for citation, and how to beat writer's block.
Writing for college is a bit different than writing for high school: check out this presentation by Writing Support Specialist Claire Pienaar (2021) to find out how.
The following are some tools and tips to help make the writing process easier. Unless otherwise stated, all these websites and functions are available online for free, or as a built-in part of most word processors/computers.
Assignment calculators allow you to input the date you receive an assignment and the due date, and then break the writing process into a manageable set of tasks, each with their own suggested due date. This can be a good way to figure out an order and schedule for tackling a large writing assignment, as well as figuring out roughly how much time you should spend on each step. Many of these webpages can also direct you to further resources to help you complete each of the steps (research, brainstorming, drafting, and editing).
Here are some writing assignment calculators developed by different institutions:
Planning a set amount of time to sit down and write can be a useful approach to writing essays. It can feel a lot more manageable to write for half an hour that an entire day. Timers such as the Tomato Timer are based on the Pomodoro study method, which alternates between study periods and rest periods. Using these timers helps you take regular breaks during your study (or writing) process and keep your mind fresh. You can also change the timing on most of these timers to suit the work/break schedule that works best for you.
Here are some online study timers:
In addition to the built-in spellcheck in many word processors, some software offers additional layers of spelling and grammar checking. Be aware that many of them have both free and paid versions, and
Did you know that you can you can customize the Spelling and Grammar Check tool in Word to check for a wider range of grammar and style errors/suggestions?
These are just a few of the keyboard shortcuts that can help you accomplish writing tasks more quickly/easily. Note that "Control" (Ctrl) is used on PCs - if you are using a Mac, you will need to hit the "Command" button instead of "Control" to use these shortcuts:
Most academic databases will include a "cite" button, which automatically generates article citations in various styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) While this can be a very useful, time-saving tool, always be sure to review the "cite" button citations carefully alongside a verified example and make sure all the formatting is correct. Here are some common mistakes to watch out for among "cite" button citations:
If you can't find what you are looking for on our writing guide or you have a suggestion for improvement, send an email to our Writing Support Specialist Teevin Fournier at TeFournier@nwpolytech.ca. We are always looking for ways to improve our resources to meet the needs of our students!
Unless otherwise stated, the material in this guide is from the Learning Portal created by College Libraries Ontario. Content has been adapted for the NWP Learning Commons in June 2021. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY NC SA 4.0 International License.
All icons on these pages are from The Noun Project. See individual icons for creator attribution.