Writing Resources
Click on the links below for an extensive variety of resources to help your writing endeavors.
Grammar & Usage
- Comma Queen: Mary Norris on language in all its facets: Seasons One and Tw
- Strunk and Whites’s Elements of Style
- American Heritage Book of English Style
- The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
- GrammarBook
- Grammar Girl – Archive: Quick and Dirty Tricks
- Guide to Grammar and Writing
- Merriam-Webster: Grammar and Usage
- Purdue’s OWL (Online Writing Lab): Punctuation
Dictionaries & Thesauri
- Oxford English Dictionary offers exhaustive definitions, etymologies, and documented instances of words in use.
- Merriam Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
- OneLook - searches multiple online reference sources at once
- OneLook Thesaurus/Reverse Dictionary - This tool lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be anything at all: a single word, a few words, or even a whole sentence
- Merriam-Webster Thesaurus
Writing Process & Structure
From Draft to Revision
- 23 Ways to Improve Your Draft [PDF]
- Avoid... [.doc]
- Proofreading [PDF]
- Put the Action in the Verb [PDF]
- Reverse Outlines [PDF]
- Revising Academic Papers [.doc]
- Revising Prose for Concision [PDF]
- Revising Strategies [PDF]
- Strong Sentence Checklist [.doc]
- Tidy Up Wordy Phrases [PDF]
- To Edit or Proofread, That is the Question [PDF]
- Twelve Common Errors [PDF]
- Use the Active Voice [PDF]
- Using Negative Inversions [PDF]
- Variation in Sentence Structures [PDF]
Improving Your Style
- Avoid Using Vague Nouns... and More [PDF]
- How To Be a Better Writer - 6 Tips from Steven Pinker [PDF]
- Nine Basic Ways to Improve Your Style in Academic Writing [.PDF]
- Put the Action in the Verb [PDF]
- Tidy Up Wordy Phrase [PDF]
- Use the Active Voice [PDF]
- Using Negative Inversions [PDF]
- Variation in Sentence Structures [PDF]
- What We Mean by Style [PDF]
Grammar & Punctuation
- Basic Punctuations [PDF]
- 10 Ways to Use Commas [PDF]
- Writing Lab Handout - Punctuation Quick Guide [PDF]
- 10 Ways to Use Commas [PDF]
- Using Quotations [PDF]
- 12 Common Punctutation Errors [.doc]
- Making the Case for Semi-Colons [PDF]
- Another Case for Semi-Colons [PDF]
- Fragments and Run-Ons [PDF]
- Punctuation Overview: Purdue