Online Writing Resources
Spelling Lists on SpellingCity.com
- How's your spelling? Could it be better? What about your understanding of academic vocabulary? Get a student username and password from your instructor to get access to lots of spelling lists (e.g. academic word list words) and enjoyable learning activities on SpellingCity. SpellingCity will keep track of your spelling quiz scores so that both you and your instructor can see what progress you've made.
General Writing Links
- Writing Center at UNC (University of North Carolina). Provides many handouts on topics related to writing and grammar.
- Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab). This site from Purdue University contains very helpful information about many writing topics.
- Guide to Grammar and Writing (from Capital Community College, Hartford, Connecticut). Links to helpful lessons, examples, and online quizzes.
- WritingDEN Tips-O-Matic. Clear, simple help with writing sentences, paragraphs and essays.
Essay Writing
- Guide to Writing a Basic Essay.
- Structure of the Five-Paragraph Essay (Maricopa CC)
- Cambridge Write & Improve. This new site actually checks your writing and gives you advice on correcting errors and improving your writing in English.
Avoiding Plagiarism
- Academic Honesty This page from the Chemeketa website includes the college's policy on academic honesty.
- Successful vs. Unsuccessful Paraphrasing (University of Wisconsin Writing Center)
- Paraphrasing Practice (from Loraine Fleming)
- summarizing (interactive activity)
Library Research
- Chemeketa Library Homepage
- Introduction to the Chemeketa Library
- Finding Articles (Chemeketa CC)
- Pro & Con: Finding Materials that Support a Position (Chemeketa CC)
- Technical Writing Resources (Chemeketa CC)
- Research and Documentation Online, 5th Edition. This is a very comprehensive writing guide or "handbook" by Diana Hacker and Barbara Fister.
Citing Sources on Research Papers
- The Citation Machine Just type in the bibliographical information (author, title, publisher, date of publication, etc.) and the Citation machine makes a perfect APA or MLA style citation for you.
- Color-Coded MLA (and APA) Documentation Format
Punctuation
- "The Most Comma Mistakes" This article from The New York Times explains common comma errors in writing.
Interactive Grammar Exercises Five Sample Exercises from Grammar Bytes--Comma Splices:
- Recognizing Comma Splices (fused sentences), ex. 1
- Comma Splice (fused sentence) Editing Practice, ex. 2
- Finding Comma Splices (fused sentences), ex. 3
- Fixing Comma Splices (fused sentences), ex. 4
- Fixing Comma Splices (fused sentences), ex. 5
- Topic Sentences & Controlling Ideas (from ESLbee.com)
- Rules for Comma Usage exercises (from Villanova University)
- Editing Words and Sentences