Style
William Lutz, author of Doublespeak and other
best-selling books on language, shares
39 Steps
for Writing Plain English.
"Neutral
point of view" and a
tutorial
aimed at achieving it, from the invaluable
Wikipedia.
Basic
Prose Style by Craig Waddell of Michigan Tech consists of
sensible, non-technical advice to make your writing clearer and more
effective.
Care and Imagination from the SUNY-Geneseo Online Writing Guide.
Unpretentious ideas about important but often overlooked aspects of
student writing. The Geneseo
Online Writing Guide as a whole is very useful.
Grammar, Syntax, Usage, and Mechanics
First stop in this area would be the University of Chicago's set of links,
Grammar Resources on the Web, except for the fact that it hasn't been
updated in a while and has several dead links.
Jack Lynch's
Guide to Grammar
and Style: "The entries here are of two types: specific articles
on usage, and more general articles on style. The specific articles cover
such mechanical things as when to use a semicolon and what a dangling
participle is; the general articles discuss ways to make 'proper' writing
even better."
HyperGrammar from the University of Ottawa: a compact online
grammar handbook. Very useful; American students should, however,
avoid some aspects of Canadian spelling advice.
Common Errors
in English Usage by Paul Brians of Washington State University has had
over 4,000,000 visitors. It is especially useful for students of
English as a Second Language.
The Guide
to Grammar and Writing at Capital Community College isn't very pretty,
but it is very wide-ranging and useful, discussing specificity, tone,
purpose, writer's block, and a great many other issues as well as grammar
and usage. Teachers will likely appreciate the
PowerPoint
presentations on particular difficulties students have.
Article usage
in English can be particularly troublesome for non-native speakers.
Myths
About Good Writing demonstrates that a lot of so-called experts should
read more good writers.
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