About Us | The Writing Center | SIU

No matter the activity, writing is essential.

This statement motivates the writing center and our services. Every kind of activity -- professional, personal, civic, academic -- needs writing to make it work. Academic disciplines build and share their knowledge through writing. Professional workplaces use writing to coordinate their employees and resources to meet their clients' needs. Our personal everyday is filled with small but vital writing moments like social media posts, grocery lists, and text messages. Effective writing helps us capitalize on every opportunity, and the writing center is here to support your development.

Our services all operate under the following beliefs:

• Writing is a social, rhetorical activity communing between writers, audience, and contexts.
• "Good" writing differs between contexts, communities, and disciplines.
• All people have more to learn about writing. 
• We learn by doing.
• Collaboration and feedback build better knowledge than individual effort.
• All people have valuable contributions to make and deserve support to voice those contributions in writing.

We invite all SIU students, faculty, and staff to collaborate with us to develop writing on campus and support students as they write their way through their education, careers, and communities.