English: English 1: OWLs & Other Writing Web Sites

The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

Here you will find many instructional materials that faculty and staff have developed for their Writing Center teaching.

Interactive citation reference tool from Trinity College (CT)

Classic English language usage guide

Mignon Fogarty is the host of Grammar Girl and founder of Quick and Dirty Tips.

This authoritative survey of English usage, grammar, and style offers guidance on almost any writing problem imaginable. Arranged in a single, easy-to-use A-Z list, the guide's entries include examples and quotations that show not only correct and incorrect usage but also the relative effectiveness of different expressions in context.

Modern communications are breaking down distinctions between formal and informal English, raising ever more questions as to how to speak and write correctly.

The cat will never have your tongue once you have The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms - the largest collection of idioms and popular phrases available today. Its main fare is idioms - groups of two or more words that taken together mean something different from the literal meaning of the individual words.

Each entry is defined and has an example sentence showing the idiom used in context.

With definitions ranging from aardvark to ‘zup?, this is a guide to the use of slang today. It deals with drugs, sport and contemporary society, as well as favorite slang topics such as sex and bodily functions.

About 10,000 outstanding quotable comments uttered since 1950, with special emphasis on the last two dozen years, can be found only in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations. Bons mots, witticisms, epigrams and profundities from nearly 4,000 people - famous and infamous, renowned and obscure - fill a unique compilation. Note: Published in 1988!