Online Writing Lab

By Annette Rey

One of my reasons for writing this blog is to help writers understand that learning correct language usage should never stop. If we love to write, we should love the vehicle that takes our readers to places we want to transport them.

I especially sympathize with aspiring writers whose first language is not English. They need additional help navigating the complexities of the language.

The following site offers free access to instruction that will improve all of our efforts to polish our writing projects.

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/ — Home page of Purdue University, College of Liberal Arts

Some of the subjects covered are: punctuation, sentence structure, sentence style, prepositions, and ESL (English as a Second Language) exercises.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/ — OWL home page for exercises. Click on the category you’d like to study at the left of the screen.

For a quick look, click on the links below to go directly to a specific exercise.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/2/ — Grammar exercises  – you can choose from categories like: Adjective or Adverb?, Appositives, Articles, Count and Noncount Nouns, Prepositions, and Tense Consistency.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/7/11/32/ — Writing number exercises. Even we whose first language is English, still ask ourselves “Do I write out one hundred or type it in numerics?”

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/5/13/34/ — Subject and verb agreement exercises. This is an area where all of us need help.

This is a slight overview of the Purdue site. Make use of all the free opportunities made available here.

It is heartening to me to know so many people are interested in educating and promoting good and correct communication, especially for writers.

Please share this information with others eager to perfect their use of English.