What to Expect When You Visit the Writing Studio

We promote excellence in writing. Our goal is to improve writers, not just individual pieces of writing:

• We don't tell you how or what to write. We do suggest strategies, offer encouragement, and provide information to help you move forward with your work. We expect students to take responsibility for their choices with regard to their own writing.
• We don't edit or proofread for you. Doing so would violate the Duke Community Standard. We do help you with editing and proofreading techniques you can apply to your own texts.
• We don't know all the answers. We do try to show you how to explore possibilities and will refer you to reference tools for specific issues.

• We don't have the time in a 50-minute session to address every issue in a piece of writing. We do help you set priorities based on your current needs, identifying points of revision that are possible within a particular time frame.
• We don't write for you. We do encourage students to write and take notes during their conference.
• We don't promote a particular style of writing. We do help students analyze assignments from different disciplines and cope with a variety of academic writing conventions.
• We don't speculate about the grade a piece of writing might receive. We do act as an audience and give feedback about how a reader might interpret what is presented.
• We don't ensure whether or not student writing violates the Duke Community Standard. We do guide and train students in proper scholarly procedures.