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5 Strategies for Becoming a Better Writer That Actually Work

Writing is absolutely essential to modern life. From news stories, social media posts, and art to politics, academics, and business, few other skills (if any) are as important or influential as the capacity to express oneself clearly, intelligently, and convincingly via the written word. It’s no wonder, then, that the search phrase “How do I become a better writer?” currently fetches more than 51,000,000 results on Google. Unfortunately, much of the existing advice for improving one’s writing is either far too generic (e.g., “Write with your heart!”), too simplistic (e.g., “You need to write everyday!”), and/or flat-out mistaken (e.g., “Never write in the first person!”). In reaction to this, I’d like to humbly offer a detailed discussion of 5 specific strategies for becoming a better writer that actually work.

The State of Modern Writing

I’ve been writing professionally for more than 15 years now.

Much of that time has been dedicated to academic and technical writing, including university essays, research papers, funding applications, and graduate school submissions.

More recently, I’ve been writing and editing web-based content for businesses operating in the corporate world, with a particular focus on content marketing, internet marketing, entrepreneurship, and startups.

From academic authors, post-secondary students, and administrative bureaucrats to corporate clients, self-proclaimed content marketers, and everyday bloggers, I’ve come across a lot of writing over the past one and a half decades.

And whilst I’ve had the pleasure of reading and learning from the brilliant insights of countless exceptional writers — many of whom are exceedingly more talented than I am—I’ve also come to realize that there’s a huge amount of awful writing to be found in both print and digital media.

Especially within today’s unprecedented and exponentially increasing rates of content creation (giving rise to what Mark Shaefer calls “content shock”), there really is no shortage of seriously bad writing.

By “bad writing” I mean problems such as:

• Spelling, grammar, and syntax errors
• Incomplete sentences
• Improper formatting
• Logical fallacies
• Poor organization
• Lack of clarity and intelligibility.

Mounting data suggest that the writing skills of many Americans are inadequate at present and worsening over time.

For both school-age children (from grade school all the way up to college/university) and working-age adults, deficiency in written communication is becoming both more common and more pronounced (sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Reflecting on his experiences teaching undergraduate and graduate-level students at schools like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, Verlyn Klinkenborg insists:

“[Students] can assemble strings of jargon and generate clots of ventriloquistic syntax. … But as for writing clearly, simply, with attention and openness to their own thoughts and emotions and the world around them — no. That kind of writing — clear, direct, humane — and the reading on which it is based [are absent]”.

A 2016 article on inc.com reports that “blue chip businesses are spending as much as $3.1 billion on remedial writing training — annually. Of this budget, $2.9 billion [i]s spent on current employees — not new hires”.

Clearly, then, poor writing is not only intellectually impoverishing but also economically burdensome.

By no means am I the first to try to offer some potential solutions to the crisis of contemporary writing.

In fact, proposing one or more all-encompassing fixes is not actually what I hope to accomplish with this article (nor could I do so even if I were to try).

Rather, I wish to humbly discuss 5 specific strategies that I’ve used over the past 15 years to gradually cultivate and refine a set of writing skills that has allowed me to achieve success in academia and more recently in business.

Some of these methods are rather practical, straightforward, and likely to improve your writing relatively quickly; others are more conceptual or theoretical in nature.

The latter will demand considerable effort on your part to learn and utilize, possibly requiring many months, if not years, to give birth to noticeable changes in your writing.

(Note: I have laid out the different strategies in order of less to more practical, i.e., strategies 3, 4, and 5 are more practical and straightforward to apply than are strategies 1 and 2. Feel free to ‘jump around’ the article as you see fit.)

The 5 key strategies I’ll be discussing are:

1. Studying philosophy to revolutionize your thinking
2. Creating comprehensive and highly detailed outlines for your projects
3. Emulating your favourite writers
4. Upgrading your vocabulary
5. Enhancing your practical mastery of grammar, spelling, syntax, and citation systems.

Learning how to become a top-tier writer involves a tremendous amount of time, energy, work, and dedication.

Don’t let anybody try to convince you that a fountain of quick-and-easy shortcuts to perfecting your writing can be found.

Yes, there are minor tips and tricks that you can implement to slightly refine and enhance your skills here and there.

However, the real gains come after months and even years of dedicating yourself to practicing the kinds of intricate and experience-based strategies that I’m about to review.

Good luck!

Strategy #1: Study Philosophy to Revolutionize Your Thinking

Here is perhaps the single most important idea I wish to emphasize in this article:

Exceptional writing is fundamentally grounded in exceptional thinking.

World-class writing is the product of world-class thinking — period.

Without the ability to think systematically, logically, and clearly, you will never master the art of exceptional writing.

In essence, writing is the act of putting your thoughts to paper, so to speak.

It’s one of the main ways through which we record our ideas, especially so that they can be shared with (and criticized by) others.

So many people today experience such great difficulty trying to express themselves via their writing because they have not yet learned how to properly organize, structure, and work through their thoughts.

Careful, methodical, and analytical thinking is not something with which human beings are naturally born; rather, it’s a capacity that must be developed, practiced, and refined.

Sophisticated thinking is a kind of skill, i.e., it’s something that one must learn how to do and at which one can become more proficient over time.

Even though it may sound obscure or even a bit ridiculous to suggest, you must practice learning how to think properly if you truly wish to develop excellent writing abilities.

This is the point at which philosophy comes into the picture.

Philosophy, at its core, is fundamentally concerned with cultivating critical thinking.

Yes, the individual topics of philosophical discourse — What exists? What can we know? What is/isn’t moral? Do we have free will? Etc. — are important in their own regard.

However, what’s far more important is the unique ways in which philosophy teaches us how to think about—or, rather, how to think through—these topics and all other areas of human concern.

As John Campbell famously put it:

“Philosophy is thinking in slow motion. It breaks down, describes and assesses [intellectual] moves we ordinarily make at great speed”.

At its core, philosophy is concerned with two main tasks:

1. Thoroughly and relentlessly questioning everything, and
2. Learning how to effectively develop and defend arguments.

Studying something philosophically consists of ‘excavating’ and methodically progressing through each relevant assumption, hypothesis, and piece of evidence of which one can think as regards the specific topic or issue under consideration.

These intellectual activities are carried out precisely for the purpose of understanding more clearly and cultivating a more informed and defensible position on the particular concepts, theories, or subjects under examination.

Philosophy teaches analytical thinking, which can be described as the process of deconstructing, breaking down, challenging, extending, refining, and/or rejecting one or more ideas, theories, or findings.

Philosophical analysis involves ‘taking apart’ an idea in order to trace out its history, show its assumptions and implications, and test its validity.

Analytical thinking involves asking the question: Does x (i.e., some concept, theory, or finding) make sense?

Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, virtually every aspect of writing involves asking whether some given thing makes sense.

• Technical matters: Does it make sense to use two different tenses in this sentence? Should I use single or double quotations when I quote a verbal remark within a written text? Should these sentences be moved to a new paragraph? Does this phrase make sense grammatically?

• Logical matters: Does my conclusion follow from the major arguments I’ve made in this paper? Has the author of this study used the theory under consideration in a consistent way? Does person x’s commitment to y (e.g., tough-on-crime initiatives) undermine her promise to do z (e.g., implement only evidence-based policy)?

• Ethical matters: Does it make sense for me to quote this source if doing so means compromising the source’s identity? How should I phrase my concerns about my supervisor’s lack of input on my studies within my letter to my department head? Does it make sense to discuss certain medical evidence in my article whilst purposely ignoring other, contrary findings?

Here’s the key point I’m trying to make:

The only way to write clearly, coherently, and in such a manner that one idea naturally flows into and supports the next is to develop the capacity to do all this intellectual work ‘inside your head’ before trying to commit the ideas to paper.

And philosophical analysis — when taught properly and executed carefully — can teach you how to do just this.

It’s not as if something utterly magical happens just as you begin making marks with a pen or typing on a keyboard. To put the matter rather philosophically: writing is the externalization of thinking.

What kind of philosophy should you study if you’re looking to enhance the clarity and intelligibility of your writing?

If you’re completely unfamiliar with philosophy as a discipline, then I recommend completing one or more (college/university or online) introductory philosophy courses, so long as they’re well designed and effectively delivered by reputable and knowledgeable authorities.

My experience suggests enrolling in an introductory philosophy course can be a truly transformative undertaking for somebody with little or no existing knowledge of philosophical examination.

Why?

Because such a course, when structured insightfully and delivered properly, has the potential to fundamentally change not only the things about which you think but also the very ways in which you think.

An introductory philosophy course ought to focus on the core essentials of philosophy as an exercise in thinking.

Consequently, it will (i.e., should) allow enrolees to think seriously about important questions like:

• What is philosophy?
• What can we do with philosophy?
• What is ‘ontology’, ‘epistemology’, ‘logic’, ‘argumentation’, ‘fallacies’, ‘knowledge’, ‘reality’, ‘essence’, ‘cause’, ‘meaning’, ‘evidence’, etc.?

Whether you’re brand new to philosophy or somebody who has already spent some time studying the subject, I recommend examining the works of the Ancient Greeks tracing back to the very beginnings of Western philosophy.

Starting with Thales and the Pre-Socratics and then moving on to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is an excellent strategy for studying the (beginnings of the) vast majority of the main ideas, questions, and problems that philosophers (and ‘everyday people’ for that matter) have been investigating for 2,500+ years.

The focal issues that the Ancient Greeks examined and the ‘solutions’ that they offered serve as the foundations of virtually all of Western philosophy up until the present day.

Studying not only what these thinkers examined but also how they thought about the puzzles under investigation will almost certainly provide you with powerful tools to enhance your own thinking and processing of information, thereby allowing you to apply a new level of sophistication and insight to all your writing henceforth.

If you’re looking for a fantastic and free resource with which to study philosophy, then I recommend checking out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The SEoP is Stanford University’s online learning hub for philosophical studies, featuring more than 1,500 peer-reviewed published entries on virtually every topic imaginable.

Here are some helpful links:

• Table of Contents: alphabetical listing of every entry on the SEoP
• Presocratic Philosophy: main entry for philosophers who came before Socrates (including Thales, the ‘founder’ of Western philosophy)
• Socrates: main entry for Socratic philosophy
• Plato (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6): key entries for Platonic philosophy
• Artistotle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6): key entries for Aristotelian philosophy.

If you’re interested in supplementing these online summaries with some philosophy proper, which I absolutely encourage, then here are various texts I recommend:

1. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle: a ‘gold standard’ introductory textbook on Ancient Greek philosophy (this is where you should start).
2. Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo: five defining Platonic dialogues, each of which is a fantastic demonstration of philosophy in action as well as a relatively easy read.
3. Nicomachean Ethics: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary: a comprehensive reproduction of, and analytical commentary on, one of Aristotle’s most important treatises, which explores the complex question, “What is happiness/human flourishing?”
4. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 1 and The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol.2: the definitive collection of Aristotle’s known writings.
5. Neoplatonic Philosophy: Introductory Readings: one of the most important texts on Platonic philosophy after the deaths of Plato and Aristotle (this is where Platonic philosophy began to compete with and be influenced by Christian thought).
6. Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings: a fantastic collection of works from the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics.

I recognize that this first strategy isn’t exactly a quick or easy way to ‘hack’ your writing, but I sincerely believe that ‘doing philosophy’ has the potential to drastically improve your writing capacities over the long term.

Strategy #2: Create Comprehensive and Highly Detailed Outlines for (Nearly) All Your Projects

Let’s move on and consider a much more practical strategy for developing more sophisticated and engaging writing, i.e., the practice of constructing comprehensive, detailed outlines.

I strongly recommend creating highly specific and complete outlines whenever you write medium-length or long-form pieces.

Short texts, such as a 500-word blog post, may not need any sort of elaborate outline.

However:

Trying to write long-form content without first constructing a detailed outline is typically a mistake, especially because doing so is almost certain to produce disorganized, disconnected, repetitive, and incomplete text.

Yes, some folks can get away with avoiding outlines altogether.

However, the majority of writers — especially those looking for ways to cultivate technically stronger, optimally organized, and intellectually refined writing — would benefit significantly were they to commit to constructing high quality outlines prior to writing final drafts.

A detailed outline serves two crucial functions:

1. It forces you to think about, and think through, the different elements of the various ideas, questions, and arguments you will have to explore in your text. An outline allows you to make sense of the basics of everything your piece has to address. It’s simply impossible to write an exceptional book, article, blog post, etc. without taking the time to think carefully about the main ideas, objectives, and organization of your text — and this is exactly where the outline comes in.
2. From a practical standpoint, it functions as an indispensable roadmap providing guidance on what you will write about, how you will write about it, in which order, and why.

How should you go about putting together a solid outline that forms the basis of an exceptional blog post, article, book, etc.?

I recommend organizing your outline in accordance with the following seven key questions such that your completed outline contains detailed notes on all seven points:

1. What, exactly, am I being asked to do in this text? Explain, describe, and/or explore something? Reflect on a given topic? Critically assess a particular position or statement? Compare two or more specified things? Review extant literature? Something else?
2. What are each of the different parts or elements of the questions that I must address? Am I being asked to answer a number of different questions? If so then in what order should I address them? Or am I required to address only one, central question for this piece?
3. What will my thesis statement, i.e., my fundamental argument, be? Will my thesis have multiple components to it? Or is it admissible to restrict my text to a defence of one core assertion or argument?
4. What are the specific ideas, issues, and relevant bits of information that I must explore? What are the must examine versus could examine ideas, problems, or topics?
5. What are the relevant sections of text and pieces of data from external sources that I should incorporate into my writing? Which quotations, statistics, and/or figures should I reference and analytically examine?
6. How, exactly, am I going to organize my text? Now that I have my thesis statement, i.e., my ‘final destination’, sorted out, how can I structure my writing so that I successfully arrive at that specific endpoint by the time my piece reaches its conclusion?
7. Which objections, if any, ought I to consider? Can I think of one or more criticisms of the position(s) I’ve offered? If so then how, exactly, can I address and defeat those objections?

If you take the time to write out comprehensive responses to each of these defining questions, then you will complete, via your outline, the vast majority of the work you need to do by the time you’re ready to write the final piece.

At that point, it’ll basically just be a matter of transferring, extending, and polishing what you’ve written in your outline by writing a slightly more professional and elaborate text that’s well referenced throughout and free of incomplete sentences, grammatical errors, and so on.

I regularly spend 60–70% of my time writing the outline and 30–40% transforming the outline into polished prose.

I can do this precisely because my outline is both highly detailed and organized exactly as I intend the final text to be — not ‘skeletal’, incomplete, and designed haphazardly.

Strategy # 3: Emulate Your Favourite Writers

If somebody were to ask you to name three or four people whose writing you wish you could authentically replicate, would you have any serious difficulty coming up with an answer?

I suspect not.

However, what matters in this thought experiment is not whether you could list a few names or even which specific names you’d list.

Instead, the most important dynamic here would be to develop an understanding of, first, why you’re attracted to the writing styles of these specific authors and, second, what exactly it is that makes these wordsmiths such talented, effective writers.

One of the tricky things about trying to improve your writing by mimicking the habits of exceptional authors — i.e., the third key strategy that I recommend aspiring writers practice — is the fact that these writers must be genuinely talented in order for you to successfully enhance your own capacities by studying them.

Otherwise, you run the risk of copying their bad habits and thereby harming, rather than elevating, your own skills.

Just because an author’s writing impresses you doesn’t necessarily mean that his/her style ought to be replicated.

You may, for instance, like the writing of somebody who never capitalizes any of her words, who uses little, if any, punctuation, and who never puts more than eight or nine words in a single sentence. To follow her habits would, of course, be a mistake.

If you’re unsure about whether the particular writers to whom you look up are actually revered as talented and exemplary authors, then be sure to conduct some research in order to educate yourself about:

• Their reputations and qualifications
• Their publication and citation numbers (if they’re academics)
• The amount of people who visit and link to their websites (if they’re popular on the Internet).

Assuming that your favourite authors’ works are indeed excellent representations of quality writing, here are a few key questions you should investigate in an effort to successfully extract effective writing habits from their texts:

How does the author organize her writing?

• Pay particular attention to the ways in which she lays out and structures introductory paragraphs and conclusions.
• Does the author begin the piece by explicitly stating the major takeaway point of which she wishes to convince her audience? Or does she provide a bit of context and background first before then moving onto revealing her thesis (main argument)?
• Where does she place her quotations, data figures, graphs, and so on? Why do you think she does it this way rather than another?
• How often and in what ways does she remind the reader of the primary ideas she’s trying to get across?
• How does the author link different ideas to each other? Is it easy or difficult to anticipate which ideas follow others? Why do you think she embraces one approach instead of the other?

What kind of language does the author use?

• Does he write in the first or the third person? Does he ever address the reader directly by using the second person? Why do you suspect he uses one instead of the others? How would his writing change if he were to switch from one to another?
• What about tenses (past, present, future, and each of their different variations)? Which tense(s) does he use in his writing? Why?
• Is his prose ‘witty’, entertaining, fast-paced, highly descriptive, and engaging? Or does he steer more toward a straightforward approach, writing in a measured and patient way, taking his time and staying very focused on one detailed point at a time?

What kinds of stylistic choices are evident in the author’s works?

• How does she stress her most important points to the reader?
• Does she italicize words? Does she use bold font? Does she write in very short sentences for added effect? Are these techniques effective in your opinion?
• Is she light or heavy on the use of quotations?
• How do these different stylistic choices impact her writing? How do they make her key points more or less obscure?
• Would her texts be easier or more enjoyable to read and understand if she were to use a different stylistic method?

What is the nature of the author’s sentence structure?

• One of my favourite authors writes extremely long sentences that comprise many different ideas in the same breath, so to speak.
• He writes very long texts, uses extremely technical terms, and regularly discusses ideas in ways far more complicated than necessary.
• At the same time, he is one of the most influential thinkers of the entire 20th century, having massively impacted sociology and many other areas of social science.
• Why does this author write in such obscure and tricky ways? Because his entire sociology is dedicated to exploring the complex intricacies of social life.
• For him, it would make no sense to use juvenile language and short sentences to try to describe an extremely complicated, interconnected, and multi-dimensional world.
• How do your favourite authors structure their sentences?
• If they use long and multi-faceted sentences, how does this impact the clarity and influence of their ideas?
• If they restrict their sentences to a single idea at a time, what is the apparent purpose of doing so?
• Are their paragraphs generally short, focused, and complete on their own? Or do they use half- or three quarter-page paragraphs that address many different but related ideas?
• Again, why do you think this is so?

Asking yourself these kinds of reflexive questions will make it possible for you to analytically deconstruct (i.e., critically assess) what you’re reading, thus allowing you to ‘go behind the text’ and gain valuable insight into why the author writes as he/she does.

Strategy # 4: Upgrade Your Vocabulary

Certain aspects of improving one’s writing aren’t all that exciting or glamorous: they require lots of time spent studying not-so-interesting but nevertheless crucial parts of the English language and of writing more generally.

The final two strategies I’m going to discuss definitely belong to this class.

You must dedicate yourself to developing a more elaborate and expansive vocabulary if you truly want to become a more talented writer.

A writer’s vocabulary is essential not only to what he/she can write about (i.e., the content) but also to the ways in which he/she can write (i.e., the style and prose).

Interesting, engaging, and sophisticated writing that organically ‘breathes with life’ ultimately flows from an author’s ability to express his/her ideas in unique, captivating, and even surprising ways.

Exceptional writing is directly opposed to repetitive, monotonous, and predictable text.

The more ways you can think to express yourself, the more multi-dimensional, elaborate, and inviting your writing will become.

There are (at least) two specific techniques you can use to effectively boost your mastery of the English language.

First, carefully increase the number of adjectives and adverbs in your arsenal.

Dictionary.com defines ‘adjectives’ and ‘adverbs’, respectively, as:

Words that modify nouns and pronouns, primarily by describing a particular quality of the word they are modifying.

and

Words that function as modifiers of verbs or clauses, and in some languages, as Latin and English, as modifiers of adjectives, other adverbs, or adverbial phrases.

(If you find it difficult to distinguish between adjectives and adverbs — which isn’t really the point I’m trying to make here — then take a look at this helpful explanation).

Examples of adjectives and adverbs are:

• The tall tree reached into the bright sky.

• Hungry children often cry loudly.

• Unintelligible writing deeply upsets perfectionistic people.

• Don’t talk so disrespectfully—you’ll regret it greatly!

Adjectives and adverbs help bring writing to life by adding further detail to the subject matter being discussed.

The effective use of adjectives and adverbs enhances your content via the act of description.

Consider the following two sentences and ask yourself which one is more complete, accurate, and engaging:

• My friend’s dog bit my neighbour’s foot.

• My friend’s massive Rottweiler puppy ferociously lunged at my elderly neighbour, biting her small, weak foot and causing dangerous injuries to her body.

Arguably, the second of these two sentences is far superior to the first as it provides the reader with a lot more detail about what happened concerning the event in question.

A second technique for increasing your understanding of the technical aspects of English writing involves spending more time reading difficult authors whose works challenge you.

If you never reach for a dictionary whilst reading, then you’re not reading sufficiently challenging writing—period. You can’t expect your writing to become more sophisticated if you never force yourself to read difficult texts that require you to expand your vocabulary.

You should aim to read several texts each day that feature unfamiliar words and phrases that require you to look up their definitions and grasp their origins.

Just like a boxer whose skills never improve because he refuses to fight anybody to whom he might lose, an aspiring writer who stays in her comfort zone by never allowing (i.e., forcing) herself to read challenging texts is destined to see the quality of her writing plateau.

If you dedicate yourself to reading texts of a more stimulating and demanding character than the ones you normally read, then you’re bound to become both a stronger reader and a more capable writer.

Strategy # 5: Improve Your Technical Skills in Grammar, Syntax, Spelling, and Citation

The final strategy for becoming a stronger writer requires that you explicitly sharpen your understanding of and technical competence in grammar, syntax, spelling, and — assuming you’re engaged in academic writing—citation (reference) systems.

Yes, writing is an art that’s open to interpretation, creativity, and individual style. Factually speaking, however, there are right and wrong ways of doing certain things. As a writer, it’s your responsibility to familiarize yourself with and apply the formal rules that govern proper written communication.

Although their specifics will differ by language, reference system, and/or country, the following kinds of questions have definitive answers—i.e., they are (usually) not a matter of interpretation or debate:

• How do I spell this word?
• Am I permitted to use a semicolon here?
• Must I use the singular or plural version of this word here?
• Should I single-space and indent this quotation or double-space it and keep it within the main body of the text?
• Am I permitted to use both footnotes and endnotes in this document?
• When should I write out numbers as words as compared to their numerical forms?
• Which specific format must I use for my in-text citations?
• Which words, if any, must I capitalize in the titles listed on my references page?

These questions, and a whole host of similar ones, have correct and incorrect answers that you simply must learn and memorize.

As a straightforward example: it’s wrong to spell the word “colour” as “color” in Canada and Britain but not in the United States (sources: 1, 2, 3).

This matter is not open to legitimate debate: the rules of the dominant systems in each of the three countries determine what is correct and incorrect.

There’s no shortcut to developing comprehensive and intimate knowledge of the formal rules of the English language and of the various academic citation systems (A.P.A., Chicago, Harvard, M.L.A., and so on) as they relate to written communication.

You must take the time to study and carefully investigate these matters, gradually building up a more extensive understanding of the various principles, rules, and systems in place.

To help you sharpen your comprehension of grammar, syntax, spelling, and academic citation systems, here’s a list of some references worth examining:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab: an extensive, multi-faceted website dedicated to helping people better understand many different aspects of language in general and of writing in specific.

• Duolingo: “Learn a language for free. Forever”.

• Grammarly: “Grammarly corrects over 400 types of grammatical mistakes while also catching contextual spelling errors and poor vocabulary usage”.

• Supplement to Oxford English Grammar Course: basic, Intermediate, and Advanced grammar mini-tests that allow you to interactively “learn as you go”; intended to supplement Oxford’s full course here.

• Reddit’s main grammar sub-reddit: a very active sub-forum (with numerous grammar enthusiasts and specialists) dedicated to answering all sorts of questions about English grammar.

• Reddit’s main writing sub-reddit: a 260,000+ person community devoted to all things writing, including opportunities to provide and receive feedback on user writing.

• Elements of Style (book): “The Elements of Style, commonly known as ‘Strunk and White’, is a classic style guide every American student is familiar with. It helped shape how the English language is used in the United States, for better or for worse, and as such is a required read for English language learners” (Grammarly.com write-up).

• Grammar Monster: an easy-to-use, no frills website dedicated to quick, accurate explanations of all things English grammar; straightforward categories and listings allow for a hassle-free website experience.

• Daily Grammar: a lesson-/test-based approach to teaching grammar, offering definitions and descriptions of many different areas and aspects of grammar alongside hundreds of practical tests designed to assess and improve your understanding; not the most aesthetically pleasing site but absolutely worth your time and attention given how comprehensive and in-depth the content is.

• A.P.A. citation guide: official guide (supplementary links: 1, 2, 3)
• Chicago citation guide: official guide (supplementary links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Harvard citation guides: 1, 2, 3
• M.L.A. citation guide: official guide (supplementary links: 1, 2, 3)

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