writing

(Unless it's our Instagram you're looking at!)

When you look at someone else’s Instagram account you see the great vacation, the beautiful hair, the new girlfriend, and the winning game. You don’t see the peeling sunburn, all the days she hid under a hat, the heartbreak it took him eight months to get over, or the years and years of practice that led to a single successful game.

During my undergraduate years at the University of Toronto, I took a class on a Roman poet named Catullus. For a long semester I laboured over his poetry, trying to wrestle his sophisticated Latin phrases into easy English.  From all the hundreds of lines of his poetry that I worked on, one word stands out in my memory: palmulas.

When American TV show ratings start to plummet, characters with British accents get added; when websites need more views, one solution is the use of clickbait.

I was standing next to someone at the crosswalk out in front of South Campus Hall and I noticed the word “Forward” tattooed across her ankle. Single words inked on skin are a huge trend right now, and a quick search shows that the words people choose represent a summary of life goals, belief systems, or ideals.  

One of the things we do at the Writing Centre is show you the tools available online that can help you develop your writing skills. Here are ten of my favourites.

How fast can you go?

They must have been cast-offs from another school before they even arrived at mine.

Using a Pen to Get Past Writer’s Block

As I sit staring at my laptop, little black characters march neatly across the screen.

Did you miss attending our Open House on September 16? You missed some great food, excellent information, and having some fun with words. We asked our visitors to tell us about their writing habits on our Writing Centre mural. Below are some samples of what was written.

This is our blog – welcome. We are literally buzzing in our seats anticipating all of the writing we will have to do to keep everything here looking fresh. Our co-ops are English professionals so they don’t mind.