If you're registered at University College, you have access to a free instructional service, the UC Writing Centre.

To make an appointment, click on the link below and follow a link to one of the listed colleges.

Appointments: Our highly trained instructors will consult with you individually on course assignments at any stage and in any subject. Individual consultations are fifty minutes long, starting at ten minutes after the hour. To ensure that you get a spot, you may need to book three or even four weeks in advance, especially during the second half of term. If nothing is available, you may place yourself on our waiting list. If you have an appointment and need to cancel or rebook, please cancel at least one day in advance so someone else can have the spot.

To give all UC students a fair chance at access, we follow these principles:

• You may reserve up to three appointments at any one time and come as often as once a week. You'll benefit most if you work with us regularly.
• You may book your appointment with one particular instructor, though sometimes that instructor won't be available.
• People who skip more than one appointment or repeatedly cancel at the last minute may lose their access. After all, there are others waiting!
• Student who show up after half past the hour may lose their reservation to drop-ins.
• Sorry, we don't look at application letters or admissions statements.

What We Do. We work with you to help you develop your capacity to plan, organize, write, and revise academic papers. That means we'll go over your written work intensively, at whatever stage you want to consult us. But it is ultimately your responsibility to generate ideas and to get those ideas on paper. Here are some of the ways we can help you:

• We ask about your assignment and discuss your plans with you, helping you understand your topic and clarify your ideas.
• We ask questions about your draft, because if you can articulate your ideas in speech, you'll more easily discover the right words to put on paper.
• We read your writing intensively. You can ask us to scan the whole paper to see if it's coherent, or we can go over one section in detail for style and effective reasoning.
• We demonstrate and teach skills in revising and proofreading, but we don't go through your paper and fix the language errors for you.
• We point you to published material about writing. We also provide you with our own handouts, which answer common questions. You'll find some of our more popular handouts in the racks outside Room 216. You can also see them online on the Web site Writing at the University of Toronto. We can refer you to other sources of help, including librarians, academic or personal counsellors, and courses on writing.

What You Can Do to Help Us Help You: A little forethought can help us work together efficiently. Here are some pointers:

• Be sure to bring in your assignment sheet and other course material to help define what your aims are for the paper.
• Please bring in any drafts in the form of double-spaced hard copies. We will not review work on a laptop computer. If you forget to bring a hard copy, you can print your essay on a Laidlaw Library computer using your TCard or cash. This policy does not apply to students with disabilities who require a computer to read or modify their draft.
• Don't cancel your appointment just because you haven't finished the draft you were going to show us. We can work with you at any stage-and maybe talk with you about how to plan and compose your papers more efficiently
• Don't come in just before the paper is due. Leave time to do lots of revisions after the consultation.
• You will profit most from our teaching if you come back regularly to work on a sequence of skills in a variety of assignments.

Drop-ins: You may also see us on a drop-in basis if a student hasn’t shown up for a scheduled appointment. Here's our policy on drop-ins:

• You may drop in if the instructor’s assigned student has cancelled or does not show by 30 minutes after the hour. Schedules are posted on the doors. Please do not interrupt a session in progress.
• You may add your name and contact info to the daily sign-up sheet on the door of room 214, and we’ll phone you if an appointment becomes available.
• Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee you a drop-in appointment on any particular day. Our instructors cannot see you during their breaks between sessions, over their lunch hour, or after their shifts have finished. Instructors may decline to see a student during the last 15 minutes of a session.
• Please bring specific questions and consider ahead of time which part of your essay most needs attention so that you make the best use of the limited time.
• If you have already had an appointment during the week, we may limit your drop-in appointment to between 10 and 15 minutes.

To learn more about the other resources and services available to you as a UC student, visit the Registrar's files offering advice to new students.