10 Websites to Improve English Grammar

Proper grammar isn’t just a formality. By adhering to the rules of English grammar, you make your writing clear and easier to read. Even small grammar mistakes can impact your credibility as a writer. There’s not a time when the good grammar isn’t necessary to effective communication.

Whether you need a complete education on this topic or just a few tips, there are plenty of online resources to help. Check out these ten websites for improving your grammar.

Grammarly

Grammarly may well be the most popular grammar checking and education platform on the web. It offers a variety of free and paid tools to help you ensure that your writing is free from grammatical errors, no matter where or what you are writing. These tools include a Chrome plugin, a Microsoft Office Add in, tools created specifically for businesses, and native apps.


Even better, Grammarly doesn’t just point out your mistakes, it provides an explanation for you. This allows you to better understand the reasons behind the rules. This smart tool also does a very good job at understanding context. For example, it can point out words that have been spelled correctly, but used inappropriately.

Purdue OWL

Most colleges and university have some sort of online and on campus writing center. For the most part, these are only used by the students attending these schools. Purdue’s Online Writing lab is so helpful that it’s popular among students and other writers world wide.


This website provides writing insights into personal correspondence, academic writing, even writing for the purposes of engaging communities. Visitors can access resources on grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. The site is easy to navigate by bread crumbing out to the various information pages and tutorials. Best of all, it’s free and available to all.

Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of style has been published by the University of Chicago Press for decades. It is considered one of the top sources of guidelines when it comes to writing for publication. While this is not a completely free resource, many may find it worth the cost of membership.


The CMOS website contains questions and answers, blog posts, and a guide to properly citing sources. Of course, the most important resource it offers is online access to the Chicago Manual of Style itself. There writers can find all the information they need when it comes to producing grammatically correct writing that is ready for publication.

Hemingway

The Hemingway App is both an online tool and an app that you can download to your desktop. It’s named in honor of famous author Ernest Hemingway. He was known for writing that was direct and to the point, and that didn’t waste page space on big words or needlessly complicated phrasing. Because of his writing choices, Hemingway’s novels were highly readable and widely popular.


You can use Hemingway in a few different ways. You can download the app to use anywhere, even if you don’t have an internet connection. You can paste content into the editor to be checked, or you can use the tool as a word processor. If you don’t want to download anything, you can simply visit the website and do the same.


Hemingway will point out issues that make your writing difficult to read. These include:

• Use of adverbs that should be replaced with verbs
• Use of words that have simpler alternatives
• Sentences that are too long
• Sentences that are too complex

Use this tool to ensure that your writing is clear and concise.

Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, operates on the quickanddirtytips.com website and podcast offering tips on grammar, word usage, and spelling. She’s been active online since 2006. Her blog posts cover some of the many common questions that writers have. For example, if you want to know whether the appropriate phrase is ‘based in’ or ‘based out of’, Grammar Girl has these answers for you.


Not only does she offer a slew of tips on grammar, she also broadcasts an award winning podcast. You can check that out through her web page. Because Grammar Girl provides such great information on real-world usage, it’s a great resource for ESL writers. Her help combined with helpful tools such as established translation sites can help nonnative speakers improve their writing skills.

Grammar Rules Review

Grammar Rules Review is a resource on the EnglishGrammar.org website. It’s a simple, back to the basics review of the rules of grammar. It’s simply a downloadable, ten page PDF document that covers all of the rules of grammar. This includes possessives, intransitive verbs, nouns, possessive nouns, pronouns, and a variety of other rules.


Even the best writers sometimes find themselves struggling to remember grammatical rules. This website works very well as a quick and easy reference guide for all. There are no bells and whistles here, just plenty of useful information.

Writing Forward

While creative writers enjoy a bit more leeway when it comes to strictly following the rules of grammar and mechanics, all good writers understand the rules before breaking them. Writing Forward is a website designed to help creative writers. They provide writing exercises, tips, prompts, and advice on the various types of creative writing.


One of the most useful pages on the website is their grammar tips. This is a series of blog posts addressing questions and concerns about grammar that creative writers often face. There are posts on homophones, use of colons, subject-verb agreement and more.

LinkedIn Learning Library

The LinkedIn Learning Library contains 157 courses that are related to learning and improving grammar. These include ten courses and 147 videos aimed at people of all skill levels. Many of these are less than ten minutes long. However, some can go as long as three hours.


These courses contain information on the use of grammar, tips for checking and correcting grammar, even the reasons behind the rules. While these courses are behind a paywall, there is a free trial option.

Daily Grammar

This website offers free grammar lessons for those in need of a tutorial that starts with the very basics. With 440 lessons and 88 quizzes, learners are taken through the rules of grammar and mechanics quite thoroughly. You’ll learn about parts of speech, mechanics, parts of sentences such as prepositional phrases, and have access to a glossary page containing all relevant definitions.


Learners have the option of starting at lesson one and progressing in a linear fashion. However, there’s also an archive page that has each lesson and quiz indexed so that you can pick and chooses based on what you need to learn.

Lousy Writer

Lousy Writer is a free online resource designed for one purpose, to make people better writers. Its creators base their guidelines on the principle that plain English writing is the best way to communicate to English speaking audiences. They prefer simple formatting, wording, emphasize effective communication.

The website contains ebooks, video tutorials, cheat sheets, and other information. This website is worth checking out if your goal is to prove your written communication skills by using correct grammar and simple prose.

Conclusion

Each one of these websites is a great resource for the conscientious writer. They can help you to better understand the rules of grammar, and give you feedback into the quality of your writing today. Whether you’re an aspiring novelist, blogger, or simply want to improve your business writing skills take advantage of these online tools.

Dina Indelicato is a blogger enthusiast and freelance writer. She is always open to research about new topics and gain new experiences to share with her readers. Currently, she is a writer for Pick Writers You can find her on Twitter @DinaIndelicato and Facebook.