The Norman H. Ott Memorial Writing Center is a resource for all writers in the Marquette community and the surrounding Milwaukee neighborhood. The writing center is comprised of peer tutors—undergraduates and graduate students from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences sciences as well as business, engineering, the health sciences, and law—who act as conversational partners for writers in all disciplines. The writing center is a place where writing is happening; we are writers, researchers, and presenters ourselves. We help people, from faculty and staff to first-year students, work towards excellence in their writing. What drives our conversations is the belief that writing is a life-long learning process.

We believe writing is central to learning in a wide range of disciplines and professions. Writing well is a craft that can be cultivated over time. We believe that all writers benefit from talking with sympathetic readers who can engage them critically, help them build confidence, achieve critical distance, and empower them to become aware of their own writing processes. Because writing is, in its purest form, communication, conversation is our preferred methodology for supporting excellence in both writing and writers.

In order to support writers, the writing center offers a range of services and activities. The heart of our work is one-on-one conversations with writers. While we can help writers learn about grammar, style, and syntax, we also help writers with invention, drafting, and revising. We’ll talk with any writer about any project at any stage of the writing process. We also offer workshops for writers to help them learn more about writing processes and unfamiliar genres of writing. Finally, we sponsor writing retreats and celebrations like Ottoberfest and the Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon in order to foster a strong community of writers here at Marquette.

The writing center is a community of writers. We believe you are a writer.

            --Composed by the tutors of the Ott Memorial Writing Center, September 2014; updated August 2024