Introduction
The primary purpose of this web page is to give students easy access to tools that might help their writing. Poor grammar or a dysfunctional writing style will create obstacles throughout your life, ranging from poor grades in college to ineffective essays on law school or grad school applications and unflattering job evaluations from employers or supervisors. I can not guarantee that this page will magically improve your grades, get you into Harvard Law School, or get you a raise and a promotion -- but I do hope that you find it useful.
Advice on College-Level Research and Writing
My upper-division undergraduate courses typically require at least one research paper and several essay exams, and many high schools and introductory undergraduate courses do not give students the preparation they need to succeed in classes like this. The following resources are meant to help students cope with such assignments, regardless of their previous experience.
- General Writing Tips (from the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL)
- Research and Citation for Research Papers (from the Purdue OWL)
- How to Write a Paper (from Stephen Van Evera at MIT)
- Suggestions on Writing a Senior Honors Thesis (from Stephen Van Evera at MIT)
- Powers' Pointers for Papers that Make Their Points Powerfully (advice on researching, organizing, and writing college papers, from my former FSU colleague Nancy Powers)
General Style and Grammar Links
The following resources offer more general help with style and grammar.
- Grammar Resources from Purdue's OWL
- The UVic Writer's Guide (from the English Department at the University of Victoria, Canada; now hosted elsewhere)
- Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Notes (from Rutgers University)
- William Strunk, The Elements of Style (the 1918 edition, from Columbia University's Bartleby Library)
- H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler, The King's English (the 1908 edition, also from Columbia)
- Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
A Little Humor
- Grammar Rules (grammatical mistakes to avoid)
- Spellchecker Poem (modern technology makes it easy to run papers through a spellchecker to catch some obvious typos and other problems -- although it's still shocking how few students take advantage of this -- but even spellcheckers aren't perfect; here is a poem that made it through my word processor's spellchecker intact)
http://www.paulhensel.org/teachwrite.html
Last updated: 19 December 2018
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