Home: Written grammar | Grammar websites

Grammar websites locator
Organized according to writing errors

Student writers are often told to visit grammar websites for information to deal with their grammar and punctuation problems. Often, however, the sheer volume of information they find overwhelms students before they find what they need.

This page gives at least three good online sources of English grammar help for the most common serious grammar and punctuation errors in students' writing. These tend to be the most common grammar and punctuation errors in adults' writing as well.

The links on this page take you as directly as possible to information about a particular error on a particular grammar website. Note, please, that:

The grammar and punctuation errors are listed in descending order from those most likely to cause the writer to be misunderstood to those less likely to cause misunderstandings.
A short identifier rather than the full website name is used for convenience.
Square brackets contain information to help writers find the rules quickly. If relevant information is on only a section of the page, the subheading for the section is given.
In cases where understanding a rule hinges on knowing the meaning of one particular term, locations of definitions are listed and the defined term indicated in brackets.
There's no significance to the order in which the grammar websites are listed.

Guidance for DIY grammar study

My e-book Grammar Abusers Anonymous shows mature high school and college students how to study information from texts and grammar websites such as those mentioned here.

The 12-step Grammar Abusers Anonymous hinges on having access to several resources on a single grammar topic. A combination of repetition and slight differences in presentation help writers understand how to apply a given rule in their writing.

Teaching grammar forum is place to discuss grammar websites

Sentence errors

Sentence fragments

CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing
CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing
The Purdue OWL
The Purdue OWL [See: Identifying independent and dependent clauses]
UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center

Fused (run-on/run-together) sentences

CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing
The Purdue OWL
The Purdue OWL [See: Identifying independent and dependent clauses]
Bemidji State English Department
UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center
Big Dog’s Grammar

Comma splice

CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing [comma splices are discussed as a type of run-on sentence]
Grammarbook.com [See: Rule 14]
The Purdue OWL
The Purdue OWL [See: Identifying independent and dependent clauses]
Bemidji State English Department
WiseGeek
Big Dog’s Grammar
Robin L. Simmons

Verb problems

Lack of subject-verb agreement

Grammarbook.com
Grammarbook.com [See: Finding subjects and verbs]
CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing [Includes list of specific situations in which someone may make agreement errors.]
Bedford St. Martins The Everyday Writer
The Purdue OWL [Includes list of specific situations in which someone may make agreement errors.]
UW-Madison [Includes list of specific situations in which someone may make agreement errors.]
University of Central Missouri Writing Center [Includes two reasons writers make agreement errors.]

Wrong/missing verb ending

Odessa College Grammar assistance, English 1301 [VB]
Edufind.com [See: Summary of English verb tenses]
Bedford St. Martins The Everyday Writer
EnglishClub.com

Unnecessary shift in verb tense

CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing
University of Ottawa HyperGrammar
The Penguin Handbook [steps for assuring verb tense consistency]

Wrong verb tense or verb form

Pronoun problems

Vague pronoun reference

CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing [See: Pronoun reference]
University of Ottawa HyperGrammar
The Purdue OWL
UW-Madison

Faulty pronoun agreement

Word placement problems

Misplaced or dangling modifier

EnglishPlus
The Purdue OWL [See: Dangling modifiers]
University of Ottawa HyperGrammar
CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing

Common punctuation errors

Missing comma after introductory element

Grammarbook.com [See: Commas Rules 9 &10]
Punctuation Made Simple [See point 3]
The Purdue OWL
University of Ottawa HyperGrammar [See: Rule 2]
The Purdue OWL [See: Identifying independent and dependent clauses]

Missing comma in compound sentence

The Purdue OWL [See:Identifying independent and dependent clauses]
Oregon State Social Science Grammar Errors [See: Rule 1]
Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert
Towson University Online Writing Support [See: comma rule 3]

Missing comma(s) with nonessential element

University of Ottawa HyperGrammar [See:Comma usage Rule 4]
The Purdue OWL
UW-Madison
Punctuation Made Simple [See point 3]

Unneeded apostrophe in possessive pronouns

Grammarbook.com [See:Rules 2, 4, 9, 10]
English Plus [See:Possessive pronouns]
English Plus [See:Apostrophes with pronouns]
EnglishClub.com

Unneeded apostrophe in the plural of an acronym

The Purdue OWL [See: Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals]
CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing [See: Plurals and apostrophes (near bottom of page)]
The Penguin Handbook