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The Best Free Online Grammar Resources

Even the best of us have a grammatical issue from time to time. Where should we turn to to resolve those timeless questions about when to use “lay” and when to use “lie”? There are a ton of great free grammar resources on the web to answer these questions and just about any other grammatical question you have.
If you’re already improving your writing quality and expanding your vocabulary, why not also get your grammar down pat? Know where to go when you have a bothersome grammar issue and need to do a quick online grammar check.

College Guides

Some of the best free grammar resources come from colleges that make their grammar guides available to the public online. Purdue University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Ottawa all offer great free grammar guides that can help you brush up on your grammar rules. If you try your best to not be bothered by the page layouts straight from the ’90s, the grammar guides offered by the College of DuPage and Capital Community College can be really helpful.
Two of the best college grammar guides to use as regular references to perform a quick online grammar check are the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch, a professor at Rutgers University, and Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brians, a professor at Washington State University.
online grammar check
Unlike the other college guides that only give a general overview of grammar rules, these are alphabetical guides that provide answers to specific grammar problems. You should have no problem finding out whether “lay” or “lie” is the way to go with these guides.

Full Books Available Online

You probably wouldn’t think to look for print resources online, but there are a couple good ones available. A major advantage to using these resources online—besides that you don’t have to pay for them—is that you can search through them with ease. Just type in the specific issue you’re looking for guidance on and it will pop right up.
Bartleby.com offers the classic grammar guide The Elements of Style in full. Keep in mind that it’s only able to be offered online because it’s an outdated edition, so you might find its rules particularly stingy and old-fashioned.
Google Books offers the complete Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. This is one of the best free grammar resources available online.
It’s huge—it really is a whole dictionary dedicated just to grammar—so it’s nice to have it in an easily searchable online format. The only thing you might not like about it is that it’s possibly too comprehensive: it often goes into the history of the usage of words and phrases before concluding on the most correct usage. But it has answers to just about any grammar issue you can think of.

Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl is a podcast and website dedicated to grammar.
online grammar check
Although less comprehensive than some of the other resources I’ve listed above, Grammar Girl gives clear explanations that will help you resolve common grammar problems. And if you’re a grammar nut like me, you might want to load up some of Grammar Girl’s podcasts onto your iPod so that you can listen to them on the go.

Conclusion

We all know that the internet cant ignore incorrect grammar, so be sure to keep grammar resources bookmarked and handy for those quick online grammar checks. Do you know of any other useful grammar resources?

An English Grammar
Understanding and Using English Grammar with Audio CD
Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar (Practice Makes Perfect Series)
The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need: A One-Stop Source for Every Writing Assignment
English Grammar In Use with Answers and CD ROM: A Self-study Reference and Practice Book for Intermediate Students of English
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