Writer Resources

  • Acronym Finder lists acronyms. When there are multiple definitions, the most common definition is listed first and the most esoteric last.
  • Artcyclopedia provides links to museums worldwide where works by over 8,200 artists can be viewed. While most of the artists listed are painters and sculptors, you can also find photographers, decorative artists, and architects.
  • Babelfish, a language translation website.
  • Bartleby’s site includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesaruses, quotations, Strunk and White, and a whole host of other very useful works.
  • BioMedCentral an archive of over 170 biology, chemistry and medical journals. A majority of the materials inked to on the site are free, but a few journals do require a subscription service to access.
  • The California Library Directory has links to California’s academic, public, private, governmental, and law libraries that can be found by city, county, or zip code.
  • Digital History An valuable resource for those who seek information on U.S. history, Digital History offers an up-to-date textbook, as well as essays on film, private life, and science and technology, and visual histories about Lincoln’s America and America’s Reconstruction. The site also makes use of primary sources such as gravestones, historical advertising, and letters to give a more vivid picture of American History and includes numerous reference materials including an extensive audio-visual archive. if you have a question you can’t find the answer, there is a feature that allows you to pose questions to professional historians.
  • Encyclopedia Mythica, an encyclopedia on Mythology, Folklore and Legend.
  • Fiction Factor list of writing articles
  • FindArticles.com has the text of articles from about 500 print periodicals with coverage back to 1998, and usage is completely free of charge.
  • Getty Vocabularies: A collection of specialised dictionaries, such as an art and architecture thesaurus and place names. They are really well presented and useful for all kinds of things, including name generation.
  • Grammar Bytes is an “amalgam of grammar rules and usage tips presented in a refreshingly lighthearted vein.” (Byline magazine, November 2001)
  • How to do Things – Articles About Writing – Professional writing articles.
  • INFOMINE functions similarly to a search engine except that the results are limited to academic sites and resources. Be advised that not all resources it supplies are free of charge, but many that are fee-related can be found at your local library or university.
  • Internet History Sourcebooks – a collection of public domain and copy permitted historical texts. Topics include ancient, medieval, modern, women’s, and Islamic history among others.
  • Internet Public Library This Web-based library features standard library services such as reference, cataloging, educational outreach, exhibits, government documents, special collections and archives, serials, and online-only services such as a list of blogs.
  • Intute provides access to Web-based resources for science, technology, arts, humanities, and social sciences.
  • Librarians Internet Index has a searchable directory of Internet resources, over 3,000 total, on a wide variety of topics. While originally created to focus on the state of California, the site has evolved to cover a much wider area.
  • Lexical Freenet: This is useful for finding links between words, synonyms and things like that.
  • Library of Congress The American Memory Collection contains a wealth of materials on American history including thousands of photos, maps, documents, and even sheet music.
  • Index of Online Dictionaries
  • Perseus Digital Library provides information on the ancient world, including archaeology, atlas, texts and translations as well as English Renaissance and the American Civil War. Not all the resources are in English.
  • Project Gutenberg provides web access to over 20,000 books. It is the largest collection of free books on the internet.
  • Research Guide for Students provides guidelines for the technical aspects of writing a paper such as layout and style guides as well as a plethora of links to other research resources on just about every topic imaginable. And for those writing about classic literature, it also provides resources that are work-specific.
  • Reference Website with many links to news, reference sites and weather.
  • OneLook Reverse Dictionary: A handy dictionary where you provide the definition and it supplies the word you are looking for.
  • Rhetoric sites, including Silva Rhetoricae and A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices, are interesting to browse and can provide neat sentence structures if you’re stuck for a neat way of saying something difficult.
  • Thesaurus.com has general and specialized dictionaries and thesauruses, as well as an antonym finder, daily cross-word puzzle, language translator, and other writing resources that can be used on-line.
  • Time and Date Finder
  • Urban Dictionary and Rap Dictionary: a source of fresh words and phrases.
  • U.S. Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches as well as semi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees. It also includes the basics of U.S. governmental documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
  • Word Spy: An excellent site for neologisms and cool phrases.
  • Writing Links & Links for Writers is a comprehensive, well-organized list of links to everything connected with writing and publishing. For example, the “Business” category, which is organized by subject, has over 300 links related to Agents, Contests, Copyrights, Grants, Legal and Taxes, Marketing, Book Publishers, E-Publishing, Self-Publishing, Sales, Scams, and Submissions.
  • Writer’s Weekly freelance writers ezine.
  • Writing World Website – contains tips and competitions.