Online writing labs offer help to students and other writers by providing literacy materials, such as handouts and slide presentations.
Its OWL is freely available online to all, and includes handouts, specific subject information, resources geared towards students in grades 7–12,[1] and citation formatting help with MLA, APA and other forms.
[2] In 1976, the Department of English at Purdue University asked Muriel "Mickey" Harris to establish a writing lab, a campus-based service designed to assist learners in their rhetorical writing processes.
Harris and the tutors sent paper copies of their materials to individuals beyond Purdue University who had contacted the writing lab, requesting information on writing, citation, or research; these resources later became available electronically, through email requests and through GOPHER (a precursor to the World Wide Web), in 1993.
Having made its library of resources available electronically, the Purdue OWL[3] became accessible to millions of users worldwide.