English Help

The following links connect to excellent sites with writing tutorials, exercises, and generally useful information.

Apostrophe

Use an apostrophe to create possessive forms, contractions, and some plurals.

Appositives

Appositions defined with examples.

Citations

The Citation Machine is an interactive web tool designed to assist students write properly formatted citations. Links for MLA, APA, etc. are on the upper left of the site's page.

Consistent Tense and Pronouns

Remember that if you're writing in the present tense, don't shift
to the past tense (or vice versa) unless you have a good reason to do so.

Gender-Specific Pronouns

Most gender problems can be avoided without the use of the clunky he or she/him or her construction or the more monstrous he/she.

Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling

Over 50 tutorials on multiple topics with exercises.

Parallelism

This principle requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function.

Pronoun and Tense Consistency Quiz

Quotation Marks

Direct quotations are another person's exact words incorporated into your own writing.
Indirect quotations are not exact words but rather rephrasings or summaries of another person's words.

Research and Documentation

• An extensive annotated list of specialized sources for more than 30 disciplines.
• Guidelines for documenting print and online sources. These guidelines provide the most current advice available for MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles.
• Sample papers with annotations for MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles.
• Tips for evaluating print and online sources.
• A list of style manuals for a variety of disciplines.

Rules for Comma Usage

Ten simple rules for the proper use of commas.

Sentence Fragments

Fragments are incomplete sentences. One of the easiest ways to correct them is to remove the period between the fragment and the main clause.

Spelling

Everyone who has difficulty with spelling can derive some comfort from knowing that some very good writers have been notoriously bad spellers. Spelling seems to have little to do with intelligence; it has more to do with how we remember things.

Thesis Builder and Online Outliner

This site will help you draft a clear thesis statement for your persuasive essay.

Verb Tense Consistency

An exercise.

The Writing Process

Do you have trouble getting started? This will help.

(The navigation links for this tutorial are on the upper right
of the Perdue page.)

Interactive Excercises

• Comma Splices
• Fragments
• Irregular Verbs
• Commas
• Pronoun Agreement
• Pronoun Reference
• Subject-Verb Agreement
• Word Choice