Proofreading Symbols and Abbreviations Common Proofreading Symbols Common Proofreading Abbreviations (The abbreviation would appear in the margin, probably with a line or arrow pointing to the offending element.) Some Online Aids on Proofreading and Editing Editing and Rewriting (from the Guide to Grammar and Writing) "Revising Your Writing" from Paradigm "Editing Your Writing" from Paradigm Proofreading Strategies — from Bowling Green University Guide to Grammar and Writing Learning Center Capital Community College Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty is the creator of Grammar Girl and the founder and managing director of Quick and Dirty Tips. A magazine writer, technical writer, and entrepreneur, she has served as a senior editor and producer at a number of health and science web sites. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. Mignon believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. To book a lecture event with Mignon Fogarty for your company or organization, contact Macmillan Speakers. Follow Mignon on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Awards Media The Oprah Winfrey Show, Grammar Girl Fixes Common Mistakes, March 2007 "Mignon has come up with clever ideas to help even the most grammatically challenged person remember the rules." New York Times, Book Not Ready for Print? Los Angeles Times
7 Awesome Writing Help Services for Students Many students are struggling with writing assignments, and spend huge amounts of time trying to squeeze words on paper. Even if it’s not the case and students just want to improve their writing skills, some writing help services for students may be worth checking out. Here are services and tools aimed at getting students writing better: Smarthinking Smarthinking by Pearson is an online tutoring service. Tutor.com Tutor.com provides students with one-on-one tutoring. Quill Quill is a free writing program that offers writing, grammar and vocabulary skill-building exercises. JetWriters JetWriters provides essay writing help for those students who have doubts about the quality of their paper. Chegg Chegg is an online tutoring platform that allows students access to tutors 24/7. Etutoring Etutoring is another online platform where tutors offer students feedback on their papers. Time4Writing Time4Writing is an interactive program aimed at building writing skills over time.
Common Errors in English Usage Go to list of errors. What is an error in English? The concept of language errors is a fuzzy one. I’ll leave to linguists the technical definitions. Here we’re concerned only with deviations from the standard use of English as judged by sophisticated users such as professional writers, editors, teachers, and literate executives and personnel officers. The aim of this site is to help you avoid low grades, lost employment opportunities, lost business, and titters of amusement at the way you write or speak. But isn’t one person’s mistake another’s standard usage? Why don’t you cover all important points of grammar? I’m learning English as a second language. Aren’t some of these points awfully picky? What gives you the right to say what an error in English is? I found a word you criticized in the dictionary! Why do you discuss mainly American usage? If you write mainly about American English, why do you so often cite the Oxford English Dictionary? But you made a mistake yourself!
Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) - Helen Sword This lesson was based on an op-ed Helen Sword wrote for the New York Times entitlted Zombie Nouns. would you de-zombify the following sentence? (Hint: Your rewritten version should include a clearly defined human subject – e.g. “writers” – and at least one active verb): “The anesthetization of readers through an abundance of nominalizations is often the consequence of laziness rather than intentionality.”Can you rephrase the following sentence in zombie-speak?: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
English grammar: A complete guide Do you have a question about the correct usage of the semi-colon or how to place relative adverbs in a sentence? If so, you've come to the right place! The edufind.com English grammar guide is a complete reference on the rules of English usage. Comparisons Conditional Future Gerund and Present Participle Infinitive Passive Voice Past Present Functions and classes of determiners Articles Quantifiers Distributives
Quill - Packs of Interactive Writing Lessons Quill is a free service that puts a new spin on the old writing worksheets that most of us used in middle school. The service offers more than just the writing practice activities, but that is its core feature. There are three activity categories within Quill. Those activities are Quill Proofreader, Quill Grammar, and Quill Writer. In Quill Proofreader students are shown students passages that have grammatical errors placed in them. Quill Grammar requires students to complete short exercises in which they finish the construction of sentences by inserting the correct words and or punctuation marks. In Quill Writer activities students work together to construct sentences from a shared word bank. Applications for Education You can assign Quill activities to your students through your teacher dashboard.
The Largest Historical Dictionary of English Slang Now Free Online: Covers 500 Years of the "Vulgar Tongue" "The three volumes of Green's Dictionary of Slang demonstrate the sheer scope of a lifetime of research by Jonathon Green, the leading slang lexicographer of our time. A remarkable collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language, it covers slang from the past five centuries right up to the present day, from all the different English-speaking countries and regions. Totaling 10.3 million words and over 53,000 entries, the collection provides the definitions of 100,000 words and over 413,000 citations. Every word and phrase is authenticated by genuine and fully-referenced citations of its use, giving the work a level of authority and scholarship unmatched by any other publication in this field." If you head over to Amazon.com, that's how you will find Green's Dictionary of Slang pitched to consumers. Now comes the good news. Related Content: Cab Calloway’s “Hepster Dictionary,” A 1939 Glossary of the Lingo (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renaissance
Describing Words - Find Adjectives to Describe Things