Dear all

First, many thanks for the encouraging messages I've had from the two lists about the AWE website. 

Second, I heard today that AWE has been restored to health (universal rejoicing, at least in my part of Hull).  I will be having talks with a technologically gifted young man next week, I think, about its future.  But for the present, all looks well.

Third - more specifically to those who knew nothing of AWE before the last message telling them it was no more - AWE (for Academic Writing in English) is a website that seeks to answer some of the questions students in HE ask about usage, from the easy ("how should I use an apostrophe?") to the more complex ("what's the difference between 'rebut' and 'refute'?").  It is intended to be a source in which to look up things that puzzle students (that have puzzled my students) and to answer some of the questions they might want to ask about background, such as "what does 'Edwardian' mean?"; "why doesn't my tutor like 'to boldly go'?"; "who was Alexander [which Alexander?]?".  It is a wiki, which runs to some 10,000 pages, "of which," says the software, "3,132 pages ... are probably legitimate content pages".  So there is some way to go.  I suspect we have done some 15-20% of what will ultimately be needed (offers of (unpaid) help will always be welcome, subject to the vetting that makes it an authoritative source.  Its worth can be demonstrated by the fact that before the recent outage [is 'outage' a legitimate word?], it had received some 4,126,164 hits, and was running at something like 2 million a year. 

I look forward to getting it back to that rate (not for income: it's a purely philanthropic exercise, and is free to its users).

If you don't know it, try it - go to hull.ac.uk/awe, and if you don't have a search term, click on 'random page' in the left hand box labelled 'Editors'.  You may also like to search its 'category list' in the sane box to get an idea of its biases.

Peter

Peter Wilson
quondam Academic Writing and Study Skills adviser
formerly of Study Advice Service
University of Hull
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