Greeting from the staff of the OWL! We’re posting this from October, 2026.
Our Academic Writing 101 section turned ten years old this year and we’re beginning to feel like the section is showing its age. The format of short videos spread across many pages feels dated, as do some of our images. We also feel like most of this material is covered better and in more detail in our section on the Writing Process.
However, we still have around 25,000 visitors to this section every year, including some traffic that’s coming directly from other universities. We do not want to break the links embedded into your courses or force you to rewrite a syllabus. If you’re actively using our Academic Writing 101 section, please fill out the survey below and tell us how (and why).
Should we preserve Academic Writing 101 as-is? Should we overhaul it into something a bit more modern? Should we scrap it entirely? We’ll be considering the section’s fate until the end of the year.