Useful Links
Below you'll find two sets of useful sites: those related to writing and those related to your work at NC State.
Writing & Speaking Tutorial Services
From their website - Our mission is to support NC State students (both undergraduate and graduate), staff, and faculty who are working to improve their writing and speaking skills. Many visit Writing and Speaking Tutorial Services during their first-year composition courses. Others discover us while preparing work for other courses. Still others present themselves with theses, dissertations, proposals, presentations, interviews, grants, research papers, reports, articles, application essays, resumes, or business letters.
NCSU Libraries
The NCSU Libraries serves as the gateway to recorded knowledge and information for the NC State community and its partners, offering a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining the best faculty and students to the university. It ranks 29th out of the top academic research libraries worldwide, circulating nearly one million items per year with access to nearly 40,000 electronic journals. The collections include over 3.6 million volumes.
Library Online Basic Orientation
Our libraries are huge. They are somewhat confusing. This guide will help you become familiar with the process of naviagating our online interface for research.
First-Year Writing Program
The homepage of the NC State First-Year Writing Program, with detailed policies and information.
NCSU Libraries - Dictionaries & Thesauri
NCSU Libraries - Style Guides
The Libraries offer a number of dictionaries - general and discipline-specific - as well as thesauri that are invaluable. Remember: when in doubt about a thesaurus entry, look it up. When in doubt about any word, the acceptable definition is found in the Oxford English Dictionary.
A number of style guides are also offered online through the libraries: any stylistic item (including bibliographic/textual citation issues) not found in the Longman Writer's Companion will be available here.
The Online Writing Lab [OWL] at Purdue
This is one of the most comprehensive online writing resources available. The OWL at Purdue has been around since 1995, and contains references for MLA & APA formatting, the writing process, critical writing, and writing in the sciences and social sciences.
Common Errors in English Usage
A complete online edition of the text by Paul Brians, a professor of English at Washington State University. Brians offers a comprehensive list of the most common errors in word and punctuation usage. Some are rather obscure; however, the reference, organized alphabetically, is quite useful.
The American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996 ed.)
A complete online edition of the American Heritage Book of English Usage. This text is much more approachable than the Brians text, and offers a more contemporary approach to language.
Guide to Grammar and Style
Getting an A on an English Paper
Jack Lynch, a Professor of English at Rutgers, offers a number of useful references on his site, most of which are aimed at undergraduate students. These are, as he states, guides, not foolproof lists of "How-To's".
Logical Fallacies
This page provides an outstanding guide to logical fallacies, errors in argument stemming from flawed logical premises. This is a quick and approachable must-read for any student making a logical argument in an assignment.