What is the OWL?
The friendly staff at Concordia's Online Writing Lab (OWL) is here to help both web and center-based students. How? By posing questions and crafting revision strategies that promote development, enhance clarity, and improve proficiency.
Here’s how it works: we get your essays electronically, read through the work, add questions and comments, and return the essay within 3-5 working days. Simply put: it’s full-circle consultation!
NOTE: This service is not available to undergraduate students who are taking courses on campus at CUW or CUAA. If you are a student on campus who would like writing assistance, please utilize our writing center.
Accepted assignments
We provide feedback on any paper, from any class, at any stage of the writing process.
Submit your paper along with detailed information about the assignment, the format, and your concerns. A consultant will read through your paper and make comments in the margins, and address issues in your paper according to the level of concern. They will return the paper to you via email with the reviewed paper attached.
Essay length limits
- 10 pages of written work per week
- This can be one long paper, or a few smaller ones
- We cannot review more than 10 pages within a one-week time span
* Be sure to articulate your needs when resubmitting.
Consultation turnaround time
- 3-5 working day turnaround during the semester
- Winter, summer, and spring breaks turnaround is 5-7 working days
While the Writing Center staff is typically able to return papers within the quoted timeframe, we cannot guarantee any specific return time on OWLs.
We review papers in the order they are received. If you send an OWL to us the day before it's due, it will not receive an expedited review. Please keep our turnaround times in mind when submitting papers to the Online Writing Lab.
Sample OWL consultation
Here’s the kind of feedback you can expect from OWL:
Sample feedback
Sample end comments
