Free Resources for Improving Your Writing Skills
Having
credentials and education is part of establishing your professional credibility.
However, if you don’t write well, all the credentials in the world won’t help
much. Your communication skills create a profound impression on employers and
coworkers and become part of your personal brand. Spelling and grammatical
errors detract from your message. Make a good impression by ensuring all your
business communications, even informal emails, are well-written.
In
my quest to improve my own skills, I came across some free resources that I’d
like to share with you. I hope you find value in them as I did.
Coursera
If
you haven’t heard already, prestigious universities are offering free online
courses. Coursera is one of the sites serving as a platform for courses from
Yale, Stanford, Duke, and other institutions. For example, Duke University is
offering English Composition I: Achieving Expertise, starting March 18, 2013.
At
Coursera, you can register as a student in the classes, submit assignments for
review, and collaborate with other students. Although the courses are not for
credit, you may receive a completion certificate.
MIT Open Courseware
MIT
has made a treasure trove of course materials available to the public on its
Open Courseware site. This site differs from Coursera in that the course
materials are made available after the courses take place, and you don’t
register as a participating student. The Writing
and Humanistic Studies section contains many courses that will appeal to
science and technical writers, as well as those in other genres.
I
plan on reviewing the Science Writing and New Media course.
Writing Commons
This
site is
aimed at college-level students and others who need to improve their writing
skills. It includes a free open-source textbook used as reference material for
the Duke University course mentioned above. The site’s publisher and executive
editor is Joe Moxley, Ph.D., a Professor of English at South Florida
University.
GrammarGirl
Mignon
Fogarty provides excellent tips and clarification of English grammar rules on
her website. She is often quoted by other writing experts. Some of my
colleagues would benefit from reading her site – I will definitely be sharing
it with them! You can link
to the site here.
Poynter NewsU
Designed
for journalists, Poynter’s News University offers over 250 free or low-cost
courses. Some of these are general writing instruction, such as the
self-directed course entitled Writer’s Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use.
Merriam-Webster Online
More
than just a dictionary, the Merriam-Webster site includes a thesaurus, tools and quizzes to
help expand your vocabulary and your mind. This is an essential resource for
any writer.
Happy
writing!
By Gwen
Higgins |
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