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 A word of advice: grammar is not math
We've selected the sites on this list because on
the whole, we think they're pretty good. But "rules" in writing -- unlike,
say, rules in Newtonian physics -- are not written in stone. They are established by
agreement among experienced writers, even though experienced writers can and do disagree
all the time. You'll find, then, that on some matters grammar books and sites can
offer conflicting advice. Sometimes a source's advice may even conflict with one of your
professors' favorite grammatical beliefs. But although we cannot endorse any
single source, on-line or off, as the last word on words, the sites we've chosen here do
offer solid grammatical advice -- and some of them manage to be pretty amusing as well.
So: armed with your native skepticism and common sense, surf away . . .
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Grammar:
quick guides
Text only. Some on-line
sources take a "just the facts" approach to grammar: like dead tree
grammar books, they eschew fancy graphics and explain language using only, well, language.
Some of the most comprehensive and consistently useful grammar guides on the net
employ just such a delightfully retrograde method. The Grammar Handbook from
the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a clear, primarily text-based source
organized by subject. The Hypergrammar at the
University of Ottawa uses hypertext particularly well; rather than leave you alone in a
corner with an undefined grammatical term, it allows you to click on it to get a
definition and an extended discussion. Jack Lynch's
Grammar and Style Notes (Rutgers)
is a well-written, literate, and lively guide to a host of grammatical issues. One
potential drawback: it is organized alphabetically, so you must know exactly what you're
looking for you must know for example that this is a
run-on sentence in
order to look it up. For a quick guide to phrases, clauses, and other grammatical
phenomena that can make diagramming a sentence as complicated as fantasy baseball, see our own
Ten minute tour of complex sentences.
On-line quizzes, eye candy, and other internet
bells and whistles: There's a reason why you're looking for grammar advice at
this advanced stage of your writing career. Most grammar books are boring, so you don't
read them. If you do read them, you don't remember them. Many on-line grammar books aim to
remedy this sad situation by using graphics and interactive quizzes to keep readers awake
and alert. You must have a JavaScript-capable browser to enjoy the following sites:
Big
Dog's Down and Dirty Grammar, by Scott Foll (commercial site), briefly covers many
grammatical topics in the relaxed style suggested by the title. Most of the sample
sentences involve dogs in some way. For a more
comprehensive source, try Darling's Guide to Grammar
and Writing, a beautifully designed, well-organized guide to matters from sentence
structure to essay structure. Besides taking quizzes on a host of standard
grammatical topics, readers can click on button to see a random "notorious
confusable" (a pair or trio of words that sound alike, such as "we're" and
"where" and "were").
Multimedia extravaganza. Finally,
those of us who learned our grammar on TV can return to Schoolhouse Rock (use your popup blocker), a
site -- or rather a shrine -- devoted to the old Schoolhouse Rock songs, including several about grammar. If
you want to hear "Conjunction Junction" and other anthems
of the Saturday morning pre-teen set, then this site is for you (you know who you are).
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Grammar
books and essays
If you're the sort of person whose first response to a
rule is to ask "why," you may wish to investigate a source that explains
grammatical principles at length. Daniel Kies'
Modern English Grammar
(College of DuPage) is the first place you should go when the first place you went wasn't
enough. Mr. Kies describes grammar as a matter not just of form, but of function:
we arrange our sentences in a certain way in order to accomplish certain things.
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English
for non-native speakers (ESL)
Help for non-native speakers is plentiful on the net, but
it comes in two distinct flavors. We recommend the "text only"
ESL sources (English as a Second Language
material primaily offered by universities) if you are looking for explanations of English
grammar, syntax, usage, word order, and vocabulary. We recommend the "interactive"
ESL sources if you are looking for interactive quizzes and chat rooms that don't explain
the rules all that much. The best interactive sites are usually offered by
businesses and professional consultants that can't afford to give away too much free
advice on-line. You will need a JavaScript and Java-capable browser to use the interactive
sites (Netscape 4 or above, Explorer 4 or above).
Text-only ESL sources.
Purdue
University's On-line Writing Lab has excellent handouts on matters of interest
to ESL students: articles (a/an/the); count and non-count nouns (too many cupcakes
vs. too much jello); prepositions (to the lighthouse, from here
to eternity); and the approximately
thirty (thirty!!) English
verb tenses (I was sneaking into the movie when I saw Bob, who
would have been at work if he hadn't been fired an hour before).
Interactive quizzes, pretty pictures:
There are some truly splendid interactive quizzes available out there on the net
for non-native speakers of English. Don't forget that you'll need a JavaScript- and
Java-capable browser:
Dave Sperling's superb ESL Cafe (commercial site) offers a series of
interactive quizzes, activities, and chat rooms. For another site with a light
style, see Karin M. Citron's Karin's
ESL Partyland (commercial site), a very nice site with extensive exercises.
Readers can test their knowledge of prepositions, for example, by filling in the blanks of
Bruce Springstein lyrics. The site includes free message boards on subjects ranging
from current events to shopping to extreme sports.
Interactive -- Somewhat more serious:
For a unique, current events-oriented approach, Justin R. Sewell's CNN Newsroom (CNN-Brigham Young University)
is a fascinating site that offers exercises based on transcripts of reports on "CNN
Newsroom." Because readers are working with the transcripts of spoken
reports, these exercises approximate more successfully than most the complexities of the
spoken language. For a more business-oriented approach, you may consult Pearson
Brown's Better English
(commercial site, uses third-party cookies), which contains hundreds
of exercises focused on common business
situations.
Metasites: The following metasites
can help you locate additional ESL sites. George Washington University's The ESL Study
Hall has a selective and very informative listing that describes each link. GWU lists
sites ranging from grammar and diction exercises to on-line journals written by and for
ESL students. Another useful metasite is provided by the Journal for Teachers of English as a
Second Language; their listing of links is comprehensive but does not describe the
links.
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Science
and Technical Writing Guides
Writing in the sciences requires you to use standardized
text structures you didn't learn in English class -- structures like proposals, lab
reports, and scientific journal articles. Carol A. Vidoli's
Technical Report Writing
(NASA) explains in detail the style and organization expected in NASA documents.
Engineers and science students can seek advice at Virginia Tech's Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science
Students, by Michael Alley, Leslie Crowley, Laura Grossenbacher, and Christene
Moore. If you're out to expand your vocabulary, the site also includes a Word of the Month
page, which, as its name suggests, entertains readers by defining an unusual (but useful)
word each month. (When we last looked, the word was "imbroglio" -- an
extremely useful word, in our view, for veterans of academic department meetings.)
Molly Cage and Jonathan Wakefield's Writing Biology Lab
Reports (University of Richmond) offers well-written, well-documented information on
how to do just that. Steven Neshyba's Template
for Writing Chemistry Laboratory Reports (University of Puget Sound) is a brief set of
guidelines for first-year students.
For a grammar, style, and usage guide devoted specifically
to the needs of business and technical writers, see Kanten's Style Guide, which
covers with great flair not only standard grammatical topics such as the use of the
passive voice, but document structures of special interest to technical writers, such as
the proper organization of tables. The writing is beautiful; the advice is good; the
site design might productively be rethought (it relies on four tiny, bordered frames).
For a more specialized guide, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
has posted its entire Style Manual
on-line, covering some grammar and usage topics as well as more technical matters, such as
the numbering of equations in a lengthy report.
How do you punctuate a single sentence that includes an
equation? What can you do to remain within NASA's 200-word limit for abstracts?
Poets never face these writing quandries. But for scientists, they come up
all the time, and NASA has kindly provided a source for you: Mary K. McCaskill's Grammar, Capitalization, and
Punctuation: A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors is on-line in its entirety
at Langley. You too can learn to punctuate from NASA! And you should: most sciences and
"hard" social sciences (such as economics and statistics-oriented research) use
an "open" style of punctuation that differs somewhat from the
humanities-oriented standards you may have learned in your humanities classes. Ms.
McCaskill's work gives the secrets away.
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Usage
guides
Usage guides cover such matters as choosing between words
of similar meaning and the correct spelling of frequently misspelled words. Most of the
guides in the Grammar section deal with some usage questions, but if you need more depth,
you may want consult a specialist. The Washington State University's Paul Brians has devoted
a site to correcting Common
Errors in English. Learn the proper use of (among many other things)
affect/effect, its/it's, assure/ensure/insure, and -- a favorite from our youth --
peasant/pheasant. (Pheasants are not likely to revolt, peasants are not likely to fly.)
Unlike some other usage sites, this one explains why some uses are preferred over
others; it's (not its) both well designed and well written.
For radio and television journalists, of course, usage is
a matter of great concern, since they have more opportunities than most of us to make
fools of themselves in front of a very large audience. With this in mind, National
Public Radio has posted a Guide to
Punctuation, Usage, and Grammar (by Marcus D. Rosenbaum and John Dinges) for the benefit of its (not it's) member stations.
As one might imagine, the NPR guide devotes more space than traditional usage
guides to questions of pronunciation. It also covers such arcana as the plural of
referendum, usage of sink/sank/sunk, usage of whence, and the plural of teaspoonful.
For questions of correct usage in print journalism, an
intriguing on-line source is The Slot: A Spot for Copy
Editors (partially commercial) by Bill Walsh, a deeply opinionated copy editor
at the Washington Post. The site includes Sharp Points,
a collection of Mr. Walsh's pet usage peeves.
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Thesauruses
(or thesauri) and dictionaries
Sometimes at three o'clock in the morning we need to be
reminded that the first word that springs to mind is not necessarily the only (or the
best) word we can use. For those moments, a good thesaurus can help you generate ideas
about what words you might use when you know what you want it say but aren't quite sure
how to (say, express, declare, utter, proclaim) it. Try the Wordsmyth English
Dictionary-Thesaurus (by Bob Parks, Philip Resnick, and Mark Olsen) for a source that
both defines a word suggests synonyms.
WARNING: a thesaurus is not enough!
A thesaurus helps you generate ideas, but it doesn't help you choose correctly among words
with various shades of meaning. Your best bet is a good dictionary.
The
American Heritage Dictionary has
excellent synonym discussions, word histories, and usage notes. Because a dictionary is important
to good writing, you may wish to throw caution to the winds and actually buy a copy. No,
we are NOT being paid to recommend this. We teach writing. We like dictionaries. To prove our objectivity, we'll add this:
we emphatically do NOT recommend that University of Chicago students purchase or install on Windows systems the CD-ROM version of this dictionary or the downloadable
edition available from the publisher; both these versions have been plagued by software glitches for more than two years. The current implementation will install a macro in Microsoft Word without asking users' permission; it will then try to save Microsoft Word's Normal document template every time Word is closed, presenting a
signficant security risk to users attempting to protect their systems from macro viruses. At present (February 2006), we strongly
recommend that students use the free, more secure on-line version instead; a
dead tree edition of the AHD (which you can also use for light weight training) is of course
available.
If you are a University of Chicago student, you also have
free access to the on-line Oxford
English Dictionary, known affectionately as the Mother of All Dictionaries.
(Go here to access the OED from a U of C account;
go here if you are using the campus web proxy
server.) The
OED may be a tad too cumbersome to function as a quick synonym guide, but if you are
looking for examples of how a particular word has been used since it was first coined or
imported into English, there simply is no better source, or even a vaguely equivalent
source. If you have ever felt the slightest degree of intellectual curiosity about
language, check it out.
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Gender-neutral
language
Everybody loves his Jane Austen! Right? Well, that's not
what Jane would have said: she would have written Everybody loves their Jane Austen,
or so argue the creators of this site, which gives an informed historical perspective that
is sadly lacking in most of the position papers, policies, and guidelines written on
the contentious subject of gender-neutral language. Using computer search engines as
well as a more old-fashioned scanning technique known as "reading," the site's
creators have found seventy-five instances in Jane Austen's novels of "they" or
"their" referring to singular collective nouns like "everyone" and
"everybody" -- a gender-neutral alternative to "everyone/his" that
some pundits deride as an ungrammatical innovation. If Jane Austen did it, then we
can too.
For more advice on gender-neutral language, you may read
Jenny R. Redfern's Writing
with Gender-Fair Language, which explains why gender-neutral prose is a good idea and
offers concrete suggestions on how it may be written gracefully.
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Classic
style guides
Courtesy of Bartleby.com, a treasure trove of on-line texts,
you may consult two classic guides to the English language on-line: Strunk's Elements of Style (1918)
and Fowler's The King's English
(1908). A word of warning -- these beautifully written books are on-line
for a reason: they are so old that their copyrights have lapsed. Both are delightful to
read, but new print editions now better reflect contemporary usage. Nevertheless,
you may wish to consult the ur-Strunk or the ur-Fowler if a) you are motivated by purely
historical interest, or b) you are irked by contemporary usage and long for better days.
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How we choose the sites
We update the sites about four times a year,
using the following highly technical method: we go to the sites and try them out.
We include the sites on this page if they pass the following three tests. 1)
The advice they give must be correct to the extent that "correctness" is
possible when discussing a phenomonon as fluid as language. 2) They must not
be boring. Humor and lively writing count heavily. 3) They must not be
completely inundated with advertisements. Some ads are fine (site creators must
live, after all). But we won't include a site if it has more ads than grammar, or if it
tries to hijack your email address to give it to another site, or if it contains any
pop-up ads at all.
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Site designed and maintained by
Tracy Weiner. Please direct technical questions or comments to her at writing-program@uchicago.edu; questions
about the Writing Program's courses may be directed to Tracy Weiner or Kathy Cochran at
the same address.
This page has last been revised
in December, 2001
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