The Writing Center and the Writing Across the Curriculum program collaborated this semester to create its first blog focusing on writing improvement at Eastern geared towards students, faculty and staff.

Tim Taylor, the director of both the Writing Center and the Writing Across the Curriculum program, said the “EIU Writes” blog is a site that contains tips, information, ideas and discussion about writing.

“The blog gives people different perspectives on the writing process, different types of writing that is out there, writing that is demanded at Eastern and how these writing skills transfer to other avenues of one’s life whether it’s your personal life or professional life,” Taylor said.

The latest blog post was titled “Don’t Fall into the Spell Check Trap: Tips for Strong Editing and Proofreading.”

Certain blog posts are aimed toward faculty and those who are interested in teaching.

“We are directed at a broad audience, so in some cases, some of our posts are focused on instructors with tips on how to better structure a classroom and different writing activities that can be implemented,” Taylor said.

Taylor said there are blog posts at least once a week and they plan on posting two to three feature posts a week.

Five authors update the blog.

Among the authors are Taylor, Fern Kory, the assistant director of the Writing Center, along with Dan Davis, Chris Houchens, and Bryan Hebeler, three graduate students who work in the Writing Center.

“We believe that writers at EIU can learn a lot from one another, so we wanted to create something interactive to supplement the information available on the Writing Center website, which is mostly for students, and the Writing Across the Curriculum website, which is mostly aimed at faculty,” Kory said.

Taylor agreed the blog is beneficial to Eastern students and faculty.

“There are other writing centers across the nation that have public blogs, but I think that what we want to do with this blog is to get a disciplinary cross on writing aspects that are helpful for a broad audience,” Taylor said.

Taylor said a feature of the blog will be interviewing faculty members, alumni and maybe even students to get different perspectives on writing at Eastern.

“We are going to interview President Perry this week about his writing experience and his ideas about writing and the role of writing instruction at EIU,” Taylor said.

Another goal is to showcase students’ writings and publicize events such as if a student presents a paper at a conference.

The “EIU Writes” blog can be accessed at www.eiuwrites.blogspot.com.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached

at 581-2812 or rjodgers@eiu.edu.