Check out these websites for information to help you write your essays:
Software Help:
- Free download of Microsoft Office — If you need a copy of MS Office, you are eligible for a free copy of it as a Palomar student. Just be sure to use your Palomar email address.
Writing Centers (both at Palomar and Online):
- Palomar College Writing Center — The Writing Center is located on the first floor of the Humanities Building (in H-102), and you can make an appointment by calling them at 760-744-1150, ext. 2778. You can bring essays here from any class (not just English classes) and receive free help on them.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) — This website has a ton of free information to help you with all aspects of essay-writing, including information about MLA and APA format, writing thesis statements, and punctuation rules.
- Texas A&M International University’s Writing Center — This site has lots of useful information, especially relating to grammar.
- The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill — This link brings you to a page with quite a few helpful handouts about all aspects of the writing process, including information about writer’s block and procrastination, revision, paragraph development, and more.
- University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Writing Center — The UWM website has some useful info related to academic and professional writing (including resumes, etc.).
Library and Research Help:
- Palomar College Library — You can access database articles and the book database on our library’s website. You’ll need to use your student ID and password to access everything here.
- Research Guides from the Palomar Library — If you have to do a research paper for a class (not just ours) but don’t know how to get started on it, check out this webpage that was put together by our librarians. They’ve put together research guides sorted by discipline/subject matter to help you get going with your research.
- Short video that shows the differences between scholarly sources vs. popular articles
- A link to Dashboard, Palomar’s anti-plagiarism/information literacy tutorials
- Indiana University’s anti-plagiarism site + tutorials
- Sample Outline — If you have any classes that require you to do a formal outline, this handout will show you how to do one in MLA format.
- How to use the CRAPP test to evaluate sources — also available here as a pdf
MLA Format Help:
- “MLA Eighth Edition: What’s New and Different” article — A page from the Purdue OWL website that goes over the differences between the MLA 2009 format and the 2016 update
- Samples using MLA 8 from the Purdue OWL website
- Page from the MLA website about the MLA 2016 update
- Easy Bib — This free website helps you cite sources and create Works Cited pages in MLA, APA, or Chicago style. Our Palomar librarians have put together two handouts about using Easy Bib to make it easier to use. The What Is Easy Bib? handout will explain to you what Easy Bib is and how to use it. The Getting Started Guide is a handout that will help you figure out how to use Easy Bib.
- MLA Citation Examples — Our Palomar librarians put together this handy “cheat sheet” (it’s a pdf file) with samples of the most common kinds of sources you might need to cite for your research essays. Please note that these samples are for the 2009 version of MLA format.
- Sample MLA Research Essay— This link will allow you to download a sample research essay done in MLA format.
- Sample literary analysis essay from the MLA website (on Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park)
Useful Articles about Writing, Brainstorming, and Overcoming Procrastination and Writer’s Block:
- Useful article called “How to Stay Focused while Studying, Backed by Research”
- Includes time management strategies and also tips for using sites like Coffitivity and brain.fm to increase your productivity
- Info from Harvard University’s Writing Center about using transitions and avoiding “velcro” transitions
- Article from Harvard University’s Writing Center about “How to Do a Close Reading”
- Tips and tools for avoiding procrastination from The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill
- Tips and tools for brainstorming ideas to write about from The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill
- Tips and tools for overcoming writing anxiety from The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill
- Useful article from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) called “Symptoms and Cures for Writer’s Block”
- Useful article from Stanford University called “Staring at a Blank Screen: How to Write before You’re Ready
- Steven Pinker lecture on “Linguistics, Style, and Writing in the 21st Century” (53:40)
Writing Topics:
Useful Videos about Writing:
- Video from UNC Chapel Hill’s Writing Center about reverse outlining
- Video from UNC Chapel Hill’s Writing Center about conciseness
- Video from UNC Chapel Hill’s Writing Center about color-coding your ideas to organize them before writing
- Video on paragraph transitions (6:02 minutes)
- Video from UNC Chapel Hill about drawing relationships between ideas
- Taylor Mali’s spoken word piece “The The Impotence of Proofreading”
- A useful video about writing conclusions