💻 UCWbLing Blog
UCWbLing is a blog created by writers for writers. Building on the mission and values of the Writing Center (formerly the University Center for Writing-based Learning, or UCWbL) at DePaul University, UCWbLing provides a space for all writers to share resources, develop ideas, announce and promote events, reflect on written communication, and raise and debate topics about writing. We encourage and appreciate active participation by any and all readers, writers, instructors, and researchers.
UCWbLing’s Mission
UCWbLing provides the Writing Center with a place for us to share and reflect on our own work as Writing Center Tutors. We answer questions that writers have–and questions writers might not even know they have. We invite not only writers to find the useful, compelling content here, but we also invite instructors and researchers of writing to join our community.
On UCWbLing, we promote the Writing Center and all that we do. UCWbLing is where you’ll find the staff of the Writing Center writing, thinking, collaborating, teaching, learning, and, of course, blogging.
UCWbLing Logistics
UCWbLing is run by the UCWbLing Student Leader and the UCWbL Director.
All content is created by tutors and other Writing Center Staff.
To write for UCWbLing, please contact the UCWbLing Student Leader and familiarize yourself with the How to Blog guidelines, both below and on our website.
You can visit the UCWbLing homepage for more information.
🧠 How to Blog
Everyone who writes anything is a writer—but you’re an online writer now if you weren’t already before. Writing online invites writers to think about the arrangement and delivery of their writing in new ways, largely because readers expect different things when they read online from when they read in print. We’re offering a few best practices, based on this post by Anthony Rotolo, for writing blog-posts with the idea that following these conventions will make your posts web-appropriate, more enjoyable, and more compelling for your readers. We’ve also included some technical guidelines to help you actualize some of these best practices. Of course, if you have any other questions about blogging or UWCbLing, reach out to the UCWbLing Student Leader!
General Best Practices
Note that these are simply suggestions—none of these guidelines are by any means rules that you have to follow in order to write for UCWbLing. I do hope that you find these useful if you find yourself struggling to write appropriately online.
Short Paragraphs
Long blocks of text are intimidating online. They strain our eyes and are difficult to focus on with all the distractions we’re used to having on a webpage. Don’t be afraid to write shorter paragraphs when you can—your junior high school English teacher won’t be coming after you for not having 3 complete supporting sentences for every idea. White space is your friend!
Subheadings (meta, right?)
People scan online—ruthlessly and often. Instead of deterring them from reading your post with lengthy, unforgiving blocks of text, use subheadings to divide your writing and communicate how you’re organizing the content of your post.
Bulleted or Numbered Lists
Similar to the argument for shorter paragraphs, if you can say something more concisely, do it! White space makes reading easier and more enjoyable for online readers. Use lists when it’s appropriate instead of writing something out in wordy sentences.
Images and Media
It’s so easy to include images and media when we compose online, so make the most of the medium’s affordances! If you’re writing about an outreach event you attended and have a picture, share it! If you’re writing about what kind of music you like to listen to when you write, embed a playlist! Check out this post by Reilly W. where she does just that.
Note: while it may not be as obvious online as it is on paper, what we do still has a carbon footprint. Images, videos, and other large files create some of the largest online carbon footprints. So, while images can do a lot for online writing, try to be mindful of how large the files are and if they are serving a purpose.
Media Usage Guidelines
Inserting images and other media into the body of a post is fairly simple, and WordPress offers a step-by-step instruction page here.
As you choose images or other media, please keep in mind things like copyright and ownership (do you have the rights to the images you’re choosing, or does the Writing Center own them?), appropriateness, and how an image or other media might be interpreted. For example, the images in Jake H.’s post are funny and convey the themes and ideas of his writing.
For Writing Center-owned images, feel free to use images from our Flickr page! For images that are copyright free, check out the creative commons and Unsplash.
Categories and Tags
UCWbLing utilizes categories and tags to help organize and categorize the blog content being created.
Categories
Categories are used to organize content. This is beneficial for all UCWbLing readers and us as Writing Center tutors especially. For example, if a tutor from another writing center visits UCWbLing and wants to find tutoring advice, they can click the Peer Writing Tutoring category on our home page which will generate a filtered list of posts geared towards the kinds of content they’re looking for. The same would apply to, say, a writing center administrator interested in different training practices. If they clicked on our Professional Development category, they would also find a list of content that would be of interest to them.
Tags
Tags are less powerful than categories, as categories affect where your post will be featured on our home page. Tags are essentially the keywords and ideas of a post, and using them is optional. Tags are useful in that they allow you to be more specific about marking what information is in your post. If you do choose to use them, I encourage you to be consistent in how you tag. For example, if you decide it would be useful to tag all CMWR Conversation and Culture events, don’t tag one post “conversation & culture” and the other “conversation and culture.” This might take some planning and thinking ahead strategically about how to tag.
Writers Guidelines
When you’ve finished writing your post, select the one category that you think best describes your post and as many tags as you think are necessary. We use categories for site architecture, so be aware that the category you chose for your post may be different from what it is once it’s published.
🔖 Saving Your Post
To make sure your writing can be published on UCWbLing, it is important that you follow the proper saving process.
When you save your post, you have options as to what status your post gets. It’s important to save your post with the correct status, as these different statuses indicate different information to the UCWbLing admins.
- In Progress: This status signifies that the post is still being worked on and is not ready for review.
- Pending Review: This status means that you’ve finished editing the first draft of a post and are ready for it to be reviewed. Once a post has this status, the UCWbLing admins will review, edit, and either publish it or give you feedback.
- Awaiting Publication: This status is for use by admins only and declares that a post is ready to be published. It’s used once a post has a featured image and has been reviewed and approved by an admin.
- Hold – Admin Review: This status is for use by admins only.
🖼️ Featured Images
As UCWbLing is an online publication, featured images are important for locating and marketing UCWbLing’s work.
Featured images are the pictures that appear on the UCWbLing homepage, behind post titles. Notice that these images do not appear once you actually click on a post and are taken to the post’s page. You’ll also notice that the featured images on UCWbLing have a specific and consistent appearance—they’re edited to be duotone in UCWbL colors!
If you’d like to choose the picture that will be edited and set as your featured image, ensure that the image is at least a 16 x 9 aspect ratio, roughly 1920×3840 in resolution. You should also choose an image with moderate to high contrast. These images always look better with the duotone filter, unlike images with low contrast.
If you don’t want to choose a featured image, you don’t have to. We’re happy to choose one for you!
For more information on how to upload images to WordPress, check out these instructions.
🟠 The Orange Couch
The Orange Couch
Issue 4 NOW LIVE! Latest Issue Read Issue 3! Read Issue 2! The Orange Couch is a dig
https://theorangecouch.chicagolandwritingcenters.org
The Orange Couch is a digital magazine for DePaul writers and alumni who want to publish their creative writing and work with other writers in the process of doing so.
Think of The Orange Couch as a comfortable gathering place for conversation about writing and the writing process.
The Orange Couch features creative writing by writers who have sought feedback on their writing and revised their work based on that feedback. It is a place to publish and celebrate the incredible work that comes through the doors of the Writing Center every day.
When creative writing is represented as a solitary pursuit—as it too often is—it misses the bigger picture. At The Orange Couch, we know that collaboration in writing is a constant—between writers, editors, translators, and friends.
The Orange Couch celebrates that collaborative process. All pieces published in The Orange Couch receive feedback from other writers.
We are committed to representing and supporting diverse voices, perspectives, and processes in this publication and as such, we encourage submissions from writers including, but not limited to, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and those with disabilities.
🗳️ How to Submit
Before beginning the process, we ask that you review our “Submission Details” page, which you can access through the homepage when call for submissions are open. This page will inform you of our submission requirements as well as any restrictions or stipulations on submission formats (for example, we do not accept scripts).
To submit a piece to TOC, you must first receive feedback through a Writing Center appointment (we offer synchronous and asynchronous options) or by workshopping the piece at one of our creative writing groups Writers Guild and Escribir, the latter geared toward Latinx/a/o writers.
After receiving initial feedback, please make any appropriate edits/revisions. Then, return to the “Submission Details” page and select the “Submit Your Work” button, which will redirect you to the submission form. The first question asks you: “Have you received feedback on your submission?” Selecting “yes” will allow to access the rest of the form. Proceed to fill out any required questions on the form (including attaching the file) and submit.
If you have not received feedback through one of the aforementioned methods, please select “no” on the aforementioned form or exit out of the form. Selecting “no” allows you to submit any question(s) you have regarding TOC, which the managing editor will follow up on.
When Do Submissions Open?
Typically, call for submissions go live around Week 9 or 10 of Winter Quarter (roughly mid-February). However, this may vary from year to year, so follow the Writing Center on Instagram and Twitter to be among the first to hear when our submissions go live!
You can also go to our homepage to check whether submissions are live. When we’re accepting submissions, our homepage will display a “Submit Now” button that directs you to our “Submission Details” page with more information on submitting and a link to the submission form.