Resources for Multilingual Writers: Grammar, Style, Punctuation and Word Choice
-compiled by Margi Wald and Michelle Baptiste, College Writing Programs, UC Berkeley
Most Common Errors, terminology defined
Bedford/St. Martin's RE: Writing
Dartmouth's Most Commonly Occurring Errors
Penguin's Common Errors Handbook
Penguin's ESL Common Errors Handbook
Don't Know Where to Start? Start Here:
Good starting points for the basics
University of Richmond Writer's Web
UNC Writing Center Handouts/Links
Discussions that dont oversimplify grammar points and
debates
Exercise Central, Diane Hackers Grammar
Exercises, and Diagnostics
(Account required, but free)
Bedford/St. Martin's Exercise Central
Multiple choice and sentence revising exercises on grammar and style
ACADEMIC VOCABULARY AND WORD CHOICE
Online
Dictionaries/Thesauruses
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary
This site allows you to choose from among numerous dictionaries, or
check multiple ones, including a dictionary with a focus on etymology.
A dictionary/thesaurus that provides definitions, synonyms, antonyms for each use of the word. Excellent sentence examples for all near synonyms.
A dictionary/thesaurus that provides definitions
of each of a words (near) synonyms
Why do we put these words together – We
won by a narrow margin. It was a narrow victory. We won by a wide margin. – but not – It was a
wide victory.? What words go
together and which dont?
Concordancers
The Compleat Lexical Tutor (quick
searches)
Corpus of Contemporary American English (larger corpus, more search options, free account required)
Academic or Strong Verbs vs. Phrasal Verbs
Overview of Two-Part (Phrasal) Verbs
For a list of phrasal verbs, see Separable Phrasal Verbs, Inseparable Phrasal Verbs, & Intransitive Phrasal Verbs
Provides correct forms of phrasal
verbs (get rid of) but more importantly, provides academic register
alternatives (eliminate)
Academic
Vocabulary Awareness Building
Academic Word List (AWL)
This site divides the Academic World List (the most common
808 English words in academic texts across disciplines (excluding the most
common 2000 words).
This site allows you to click on each academic word list item and learn its definition and use.
This site allows you to analyze your papers or any other text for types of vocabulary (common word list and academic word list words) and level of repetition in word choice.
This site provides vocabulary (and related grammar
structures) commonly used to achieve specific writing purposes: talking about
charts/graphs, describing developments, reporting/narrating, etc.
This document outlines for writers all the things a writer
needs to know about a word to use it correctly in ones writing. (Coming soon.)
Appositives
Grammar Handbooks: Appositives
Recognizing and Punctuating Appositives
Building Sentences with Appositives
Using Appositives to Define Terms and Abstractions
Article
Use
Four Basic Questions to Ask to Uncover which Article to Use
Article Usage -- In-Depth Discussion
More Great Rules and Strategies
Comparisons
Count
& Non-Count Nouns (important for subject-verb agreement and article use)
Count and Non-Count Nouns + How to Use Them
Articles, Determiners and Qualifiers
Misplaced
and Dangling Modifiers
Dangling Modifers and How to Correct Them
Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers
Solving Pronoun Agreement Problems
Using 'They' and 'It' Carefully
Subject-Verb
Agreement
Twelve Tricky Agreement Issues
Click on any handbook to find the relevant
exercises.
Verb Tense
Verb Tense Use and Consistency
Use of Tenses in Academic Writing
More on Use of Tenses in Academic
Writing
The Use of the Literary Present when Writing about Texts
Overview of Tense Use, Examples and Forms
Word
Form
Adverbs/Adjectives
Confused vs. confusing: which to use?
Exercises + a quiz on distinguishing –ed vs. –ing adjectives
Word Form Grammar Tutorial
Word Forms
Suffixes that correlate with certain parts of
speech (e.g., ion for nouns)
Sentence
Boundaries
How to identify and correct comma splices
Avoiding run-ons--examples of well-punctuated
sentences
Fragment types and ways to expand them into
complete sentences
Punctuation
A brief overview of the semi-colon, colon, parentheses, dash, quotation marks, & italics
A brief overview of punctuating sentences
The Comma
Conquering the Comma (PPT presentation)
Extended Rules for Using Commas
Punctuation with That/Which
Commas with Which/Who: Restrictive v. Non-Restrictive
The Semicolon
The Colon
Using colons
The Dash
Proper Use of the Dash
The Apostrophe
Titles
Punctuating Titles of Outside Sources
Sentence
Structure
Simple, Compound,
Complex, Compound-Complex Sentence Examples
Focuses on three elements of variety -- length,
structure, beginnings – and provides strategies for analyzing ones one
paper (Coming soon.)
Parallel
Structure
Purdue OWL: Parallel Structure
Columns on Parallel Structure: explain the power of parallelism
Style
Seven Stylistic
Principles to Consider
Advice on how to delete the unnecessary that,
it, which, there, to be + nominalizations and combine sentences or
revise sentences using strong active verbs or a colon
Features of Academic Writing -- Formality
Includes principles and exercises to recraft
colloquial, informal sentences into more formal ones.
Passive
Voice
When to – and not to – use passive
structures