Writing Resources

University Writing Center Free one-on-one tutoring, either in person or online, for all students in the university. The Writing Center also runs free workshops on common writing concerns such as punctuation or writing thesis statements, and provides an extensive library of online handouts and reference materials to help with all writing assignments.

The George Mason Library For help with research inquiries, please visit the WITS tutorial on Research Skills, which is also on the Composition Program website.

STAR Center The STAR (Student Technology Assistance and Resource) Center's mission is to provide opportunities for students to develop their information technology skills, presently to include Multimedia, Internet Connectivity, Video (digital and analog), Desktop Publishing, Presentation, and Web Authoring. STAR brings together technology training, skills, equipment, software, and experienced students creating a one-stop shop for students interested in learning about technology.

ESL Support You'll find links from this page to many different ESL resources at the University Writing Center and around the world. We've put them in three different categories to help you: Our Favorite ESL Sites, Online Grammar Guides, and Online ESL Workshops.

Web Resources for Writing

The following sites have been evaluated for inclusion on this page against one or more of the following criteria:

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant This site contains suggestions for writing across the process, from topic selection and composing and organizing through editing; also looks at different styles of essays (informal, thesis/support, argumentative, and exploratory). NOTE: Although the site is affiliated with amazon.com, the Composition Program of George Mason University has no affiliation with amazon.com.

GRAMMAR Guide to Grammar and Writing This site offers comprehensive instruction on grammar and style at the sentence and paragraph levels along with an explication of "Principles of Composition" at the essay level.

Big Dog's Grammar: A Bare Bones Guide to English This site covers the following grammar points: Subjects, Verbs, Prepositions, Fragments, Comma-splices/Fused sentences, Joiners, Agreement (Subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent), Dangling and Misplaced modifiers, Parallel structures, Reference, Pronouns, Consistency, Active/passive constructions. Interactive exercises allow the reader to see how well s/he has understood each point (except for Joiners).

FastFax: Improving Your Grammar (Writing Services from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada) This site provides text-based explanation of subject-verb agreement, pronoun-noun agreement, placement of modifiers and use of apostrophes with examples along with links to style, sentence structure, and punctuation.

Bottom-Line, Low Anxiety Grammar & Sentence Structure This site provides text-based explanations about sentence structure and interactive exercises to check comprehension.