The following links will help you when you are drafting your text:

Some Useful Handouts

Basic Introductions and Conclusions (PowerPoint Presentation)
This short Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation, by Ana R. of the DePaul University Writing Center, explains the basic elements of an introduction and conclusion. You can use these basics when working on all sorts of writing assignments—from short essays to long research papers.

Putting It All Together: Drafting Strategies

Resources for Specific Types of Writing

Completing Your Dissertation: Strategies for Success

Some Useful Web Resources

Topic Sentences and Signposting, this article, by Elizabeth Abrams for the Writing Center at Harvard University (2000), provides a clear, efficient description of how topic sentences and transitions can help writers introduce and connect ideas for their readers and how “signposts” can help writers changes direction when, for example, they introduce counter-arguments or pause in order to provide historical background for a point.

Writing an Effective Title, from the University of Minnesota Center for Writing
This helpful handout offers an easy to read collection of advice and some great ideas for crafting a title for your work.

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), from Brigham Young University
This database allows the user to see language in the various contexts in which it is used. “The corpus contains more than 400 million words of text and is equally divided among spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts. It includes 20 million words each year from 1990-2009 and the corpus is also updated once or twice a year (the most recent texts are from Summer 2009). Because of its design, it is perhaps the only corpus of English that is suitable for looking at current, ongoing changes in the language.

The interface allows you to search for exact words or phrases, wildcards, lemmas, part of speech, or any combinations of these. You can search for surrounding words (collocates) within a ten-word window (e.g. all nouns somewhere near faint, all adjectives near woman, or all verbs near feelings), which often gives you good insight into the meaning and use of a word.”

The Assignment Calculator, from the University of Minnesota
As described on the University of Minnesota Center for Writing website: “Students can use this tool to break down any assignment for any course into manageable steps. After entering a due date and the academic department in which their course is being offered, users are given a series of suggested stages and deadlines to follow as they complete the assignment—the newest version of this tool will even provide email reminders if students request it. This tool was developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries in collaboration with the Center for Writing and the Center for Teaching and Learning Services.”

The Association for the Support of Graduate Students (ASGS), From the website: “ASGS is a service organization for graduate students to help students plan, initiate, and complete their theses or dissertations, produce the highest quality research, write effectively in the proper editorial style, obtain their academic degree(s), and improve their lives throughout the process.”

The Dissertation Calculator, from the University of Minnesota
Even though this resource has been designed for Ph.D. students, a great deal of its resources—including the “calculator”—can easily be tailored to many kinds of writing situations.