Navigation: Main Content Sections
Navigation: Sections
Writers
Workshop: Teacher Resources
Web Resources
University Online Writing Labs and Websites
- Purdue University's
Online Writing Lab (OWL)
Purdue University's OWL has over 75 handouts, one of the most extensive
collections of advice about writing on the web. Most other sites,
instead of providing their own handouts, point to Purdue's. The
handouts are generally short but useful and offer plenty of examples.
About half of the handouts address punctuation and grammatical issues
(e.g., "Dangling Modifiers," "Making Subjects and Verbs Agree,"
"Commas") and include exercises for the user. Others focus on style
("Conciseness," "Transitions," "Using Nonsexist Language,"), reference
formats (APA and MLA), and give advice about the writing process itself
("When You Start to Write," "Overcoming Writer's Block," "Developing an
Outline"). The collection also includes advice on writing resumes and
cover letters and gives sample letters for various purposes. One set of
documents (on count and non-count nouns, use of articles and
prepositions, etc.) will be especially helpful for writers whose first
language is not English. The handouts are organized in three ways: as a
table of contents, as a simple list, and as a "prose index" with
hyperlinks to the documents.
- University of
Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center
This site features an extensive, well-organized, searchable collection
of handouts. General topic areas include Peer Reviews; Academic Writing
(Literature, Research, Reviews); Cover Letters; Grammar, Style, and
Punctuation; and Documentation Styles. This is one of the more
extensive online sources about different documentation styles and
covers the following formats: American Psychological Association (APA),
Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago/Turabian (a footnote or
endnote system), American Political Science Association (APSA), and the
Council of Biology Editors (CBE). This site also has an exceptionally
detailed set of handouts on specific types of academic writing,
including advice on "Reading a Book to Review It," "Writing a Critical
Review of a Nonfiction Book or Article," "Organizing a Critical Review
of Three or More Authors," and "Writing Annotated Bibliographies." The
grammar and punctuation section is well-written and contains plenty of
examples, but is purely textual.
- Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute's Center for Communication Practices
This is a hyperlinked style and punctuation guide. It is very nicely
written, is quite extensive, and has plenty of examples. The guide has
two parts. The first is a "Prose Style Section" that explains twelve
principles of good prose style, including "Write in the Active Voice,"
"Avoid Nominalizations," "Express Parallel Ideas in Parallel
Grammatical Form," and "Place the Emphatic Words at the End of the
Sentence." The second part of the guide covers "Basic Punctuation and
Mechanics" and discusses fifty of the most common problems with
punctuation and mechanics. Most of these rules are illustrated with
examples, and many are cross-referenced with other rules with which
they are frequently confused. Problem areas covered include commas,
semicolons, colons, dashes, parentheses, ellipsis dots, and hyphens.
This site does not offer advice about the writing process or about
specific types of writing (technical, literary, ESL, etc.), but it is a
good basic guide for improving general writing and will be useful to
almost any user. The explanations and examples given are better than
most other similar materials at other sites.
Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines
- Malaspina
University-College's Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Project
Contains the background of the Malaspina Project, motivation for
Writing Across the Curriculum and for including writing in other
disciplines' classes, and strategies for writing assignments in other
fields. Sample strategies cover Art History, Biology, Business,
Chemistry, Economics, Education, Geography, History, Mathematics,
Music, Nursing, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and
Visual Arts.
Dictionaries
Writing Gallery
