Marks Family Writing Center
The Marks Family Writing Center was established in 2003 to provide writing support to Penn students and faculty across the disciplines. Thanks to the generous support of Howard Marks, the Center is open to Penn students 6 days a week. In addition to providing individual writing guidance and feedback to our students, the Marks Family Writing Center also presents writing workshops across campus, consults with faculty and assists them with designing and responding to writing assignments, and engages in community outreach.
The Writing Center is staffed by friendly, well-qualified peer and faculty writing specialists who enjoy working with other writers, from freshmen to doctoral candidates. We are ready to help you with any aspect of the writing process:
- Analyze your writing assignments or professor feedback to determine what s/he wants
- Brainstorm topics for a paper or personal statement
- Help you plan, write, stage, or revise a research paper
- Give you feedback on cover letters, applications, proposals
- Teach you strategies for writing and organizing lengthy papers and reports
- Show you how to strengthen sentences, paragraphs, transitions, diction
- Give you tips on how to make your writing more powerful and engaging
- Identify patterns of errors in grammar and mechanics
If you're in a critical writing seminar, the Center can even provide specific help on assignments since they have been extensively trained in the Critical Writing Program's approach.
Whatever your writing need -- from simply having a fresh pair of eyes to puzzling out why a professor didn't like your work -- our specialists are ready to help. Along with improving whatever project you bring to us, our aim is to expand your own knowledge of the craft so that you exit Penn a confident, skillful writer.