West Coast Screenwriting: "From Blank Page to Big Screen - Learn to Write For The Movies." Vancouver Island screenwriters Keith Digby and Brian Paisley offer regular, personalized workshops in screenwriting. Check out their new BLOG here; a recent post: "Ten things to do… or not to do with dialogue". They are just as applicable to storywriting as they are to screenwriting. 02/11/09

Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do): An excellent article containing at least one tip for each of us who do any writing at all. "...most of the time the author...is too close to the manuscript to make corrections. ...the 10 ouchies listed here crop up everywhere. They’re so pernicious that even respected Internet columnists are not immune." 12/16/08

Suite 101 courses: "Suite101.com offers FREE, fun, and accessible online learning for a wide variety of general interest courses designed with you in mind. All you have to do is pick a course or a particular lesson and simply click and learn…it's that easy!" 04/02/08

Here's just one example: Professional Writing: "By taking this two-week course, you will be. This course will provide you with enough resources and contacts to keep your career as a professional writer going long after you've stopped reading." The lessons: Basics of Writing Professionally; Hone Those Skills!; Market (and Market); Manage to Write!" 04/02/08

The Free Library.com: The EduResources Weblog says this about it: "A short biography of each author accompanies the e-texts, which include both short and long works; writers of fiction and non-fiction (such as Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, and John Kennedy) are included. Additionally, a selection of famous quotations and additional resources accompany each listing. Textual searches, both within the entire library, and within a selected e-text can by made. Perhaps some evaluators might be critical about who is included in this e-library and who is missing, but I'm grateful to find such a readily available free library." 04/10/05

Geometry Step By Step from the Land of the Incas: "It provides an eclectic mix of sound, science, and Incan history intended to interest students in Euclidean geometry. The site includes geometry problems, proofs, quizzes, puzzles, quotations, scientific speculation, and more." 04/16/04

Wiktionary: "...includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics, extensive appendices. ...not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it. ...etymologies, pronunciations, quotations, synonyms, antonyms, translations..."

Quotations from Famous Authors: Organized by author's last name.04/26/01

Oxford English Dictionary Online: Updated quarterly with at least 1000 new and revised entries. "The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books." 08/14/01

Write Better: A set of FREE downloadable courses from MIT's Open Courseware site. 03/04/08

Bibliomania's Reference Section: Reader's handbooks, dictionaries, quotations, thesauri, a phrase & fable section, and more. 07/02/07

The OWL at Perdue: A fantastic resource site: "Free writing help and teaching resources, open 24/7" Here are some of their categories: The Writing Process; Professional, Technical, and Scientific Writing; Job Search Writing; General Academic Writing; Research & Citation; ESL; Literary Analysis & Criticism; Writing in the Social Sciences; Writing in Engineering; Creative Writing; Teaching Writing. -- and each one has many sub-menu items. I can't describe it; you'll just have to check it out for yourself! 01/10/07

Writing Guides: This is a very helpful site. Includes STYLE guides, WRITING guides, and other tools. Includes style guides I hadn't heard of until now -- CBE (for biologists), IEEE (for engineers), and MUCH more...check it out. 11/11/06

25 Absolute Best Web Resources for Writers: Listed under headings suchs as How To Write, What To Write, Where To Find Information, How To Format Your Paper, Study Help, and more... 02/08/06

Agents: Guide to Literary Agents 12/29/02

Article Finder: (A searchable database of full-text articles dating back to 1998 from more than three hundred magazines and journals. All of the articles are *free*, thanks to a content-distribution partnership between web directory and search engine LookSmart and reference publisher The Gale Group)

Bedford Handbook Online Resources: Lots of free goodies here at the "companion web site for The Bedford Handbook. Includes online resources for writing, grammar, and research. No charge. No activation code required." Includes peer review tools, grammar helpers, writing and research tools, and special sections for Instructors & students.10/29/06

Bibliographies using "Endnote" - Bibliographies made easy by using this software to collect, organize, update. Also makes it easy to do a search then export as HTML.

Blogs: A New Blog for Copyeditors (article); and here's a link to the actual new blog of which they speak, Prints The Chaff. 08/23/03

Blogs: The CyberJournalist List ~ The Internet's most complete directory of J-Blogs (aka Journalists' Weblogs) 08/23/03

Copyright for the Internet

Encarta Reference Page: Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Atlas and more

Essay: In Defense of the Essay: <snippet>"In his introduction to the Norton Anthology of the Personal Essay, Mr. Epstein makes reference to the rise and fall of genres, which occur no less frequently than the rise and fall of empires. Time was when drama was tops, only to be outdone by the poem. Now the novel is king. Unless one counts film. Or, God help us, television. This much seems certain: if the essay has been exiled to the kitchen table of literature, this has not always been the case."</snippet> 10/11/03

Farmer's Almanac

FreeByte's Online Reference: Don't go here unless you have a couple of hours to look at everything they offer. It's the closest I've come to thinking "one stop shopping for reference resources." 01/16/02

FreelanceWriting.com: website for today's working writers  12/29/02

Freelancers - Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career: 12/29/02

Freelance Writers website: About.inc's huge site for writers. Always something there to explore. 12/29/02

Google ~Guide: New page. Helps experts too. Example of the type of information on the site: "Why is the title of this tutorial Google ~Guide? Putting a tilde in front of a search term (with no space in between) effectively turns that term into any of its synonyms. The tilde is known as synonym operator. So, if you search for "Google ~Guide," Google will find Google Guide as well as other Google tutorials." 02/09/04

Internet Hoaxes: (info service)

iTools! A great collection of language tools. Link to it from your course home page! Includes general and specialized dictionary / thesaurus tools, translation tools, research tools, and search tools. 02/22/02

News University: FREE Courses of interest to writers: That's right, this online university offers FREE courses; all you have to do is become a registered user of their site/services. I'm very impressed with what they have to offer already, and they've only just begun! "NewsU is committed to providing interactive, inexpensive courses that appeal to journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media. Officially launched in April 2005, NewsU offers an innovative approach to helping journalists enhance their skills." From today's eLearning Guru newsletter: "Although NewsU.org is designed for professional journalists, I think many e-learning designers will find the free courses of value. They include courses on interview techniques, clear writing, color and design, use of photography, etc." 06/01/05

News University course: The Writer's Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use: "This collection of writing tools will help you strengthen new work and diagnose stories you have already written. The self-directed course groups tools into four sections:

• nuts and bolts, including word choice and sentence structure;
• blueprints to create architecture for your stories;
• special effects to refine your writing voice;
• and useful habits to help you be a more confident writer.
  Each tool features exercises to help you apply what you've learned. Use the tools to help build your skills or as reference to keep your writing sharp." 06/01/05

OneLook's reverse dictionary: "...lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box above and hit the "Find words" button. In most cases you'll get back a list of related terms with the best matches shown first." Examples of uses: Find a word if you know its definition; Explore related concepts; Generate a list of words in some category; Answer basic identification questions; Solve crossword puzzle clues. 10/30/04

PLAIN ENGLISH: Tips for writing in Plain English: This article is good, and the best part is the MANY links to resources on the topic. 08/03/05

Postal Code lookup: (Canadian) When you get there, look for the link on the right side of the screen.

Poynter Online: "Everything you need to be a better journalist. The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists." One of their projects is to offer FREE courses at News University (see reference above). 06/01/05

Research? Electronic Resources for the Reference Desk

Rights ~ A Novice Writer's Guide to Rights: "Knowing the basic rights that you own in your work and the terms used by the publishing world can help avoid some nasty disappointments down the road." 12/29/02

26 Golden Rules for Writing Well: this list is both hilarious and right on with its advice. Enjoy! 04/30/02

Search Engine Watch: EVERYTHING you need to know about search engines is collected at this site!

Virus Myths/Hoaxes: "Mundus vult dicipi"--"The world wants to be deceived"

Webwriting That Works: "We help you write faster, better, and brighter, for the Web!" 01/17/04

Webwriting ~ Quality Web Content/Words That Work: This site is full of writers' resources. Among them a List of articles about writing web content. 02/26/04

Why do People Write? Is the desire to write a brain disease? This is is a good article. Long, so don't need to read it all, just skim it. This article is a book review of a book that the author didn't much like, but there are some kewl ideas in the article as well as in the book he's reviewing, The Midnight Disease. "The question that looms over The Midnight Disease is the extent to which writing, and the moods stemming from it, can be traced to brain abnormality." 04/26/04

Writerly Sites: Resource links especially for web writers. From Webwriting That Works. 01/17/04

WritingWorld.com: "A world of writing tips for writers around the world." 12/29/02

WritersWrite.com: "Your one-stop resource for information about books, writing, and publishing. 12/29/02