Useful books and websites

ONLINE

• Get grammar tips and more from the Grammar Girl
• Check your grammar online with Grammarly 
• Make your writing bold and clear with tips from Hemingway
• Use Visible Thread Readability for suggestions on improving readability
• Consult the Oxford English Dictionary
• Interested in learning more? Follow the links at Internet Resources
• Go to bartleby.com for resources for writers, including:

• Fowler’s classic The King’s English, an authoritative resource with common-sense rules of style and grammar
• Strunk’s Elements of Style, the traditional reference for anyone who wants to write clear but classy English

BOOKS

• English for the Natives – Discover the grammar you don’t know you know by Harry Ritchie (John Murray)
• Good Writing Guide by Graham King (Collins) — a comprehensive guide to punctuation, grammar, English usage etc.
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (Profile Books) — the best-selling punctuation guide
• On Writing Well by William Zinsser (HarperCollins) — an inspiring guide for writers who love words
• Making Sense of English Usage by David Crystal (Chambers) — an alphabetical guide to the words we use (invaluable for writers and editors)

ONLINE

• A free download of a guide to writing in plain English for an older readership: Communicating with Older People by Sarah Carr

BOOKS

• Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please by Joseph Kimble (Carolina Academic Press) – makes the case for plain language in business, government and the law (with research showing how plain language saves time and money)
• Oxford Guide to Plain English by Martin Cutts (OUP) –  an easy-to-read guide on how to write plain English

GROUPS

• Clarity — the journal and network for plain legal language
• PLAIN Language Association International — for the latest developments in plain English

ONLINE

• A practical Irish guide called the Customer Communications Toolkit for the Public Service and created by the National Disability Authority
• The style guide of the Guardian newspaper
• The HSE guide on writing digital content
• The UK government’s style guide for writing online

BOOKS

• The Global English Style Guide by John R. Kohl (SAS) — for anyone who writes for a global audience or who writes English that will be translated into other languages
• Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (OUP) — helps to solve those tricky issues that writers and editors face every day
• Oxford Style Manual (OUP) — an essential resources for any writer or editor (and it includes the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors)

ONLINE

• For international reports on web usability and to sign up for email alerts, go to the experts, Neilsen Norman Group
• Find out how to make your website content accessible with help from the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design

ONLINE

• • Find out how to use the Flesch Reading Ease Scale in MS Word to see your readability score
  • The Gunning Fog index calculates the number of years of formal education required to read a text. Time and Newsweek have a Gunning Fog index of 10 and 11. Paste one of your paragraphs into the box at Online Utility

BOOKS

• • Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers by Harold Evans (Pimlico) — a classic manual by a former editor of The Sunday Times
  • The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn (University of California) — a thorough grounding in editing for professionals (with exercises and answers)

BOOKS

• • Writing a Report by John Bowden (How To Books)
  • Technical Writing for Dummies by Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts (Hungry Minds) has useful tips, checklists and examples

BOOKS

• Find out how lawyers can write English that we all understand in PLAIN Language for Lawyers by Michele M. Asprey (Federation Press)
• Lucid Law by Martin Cutts (Plain Language Commission) shows how Acts of Parliament could be improved by plainer language and clearer design