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If you are interested in building your vocabulary, or if you just like words, check out A Word A Day.
The online Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students include exercises.
William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, fourth edition, Allyn & Bacon, Needham Heights, Massachusetts, 1999. This is also available on computer disk for both Mac and PC, and on videocassette. You can browse the first edition on line. It is a classic little book of advice on good writing.
Here is Strunk's famous paragraph titled "Omit needless words".
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, third edition edited by R. W. Burchfield, Oxford University Press, 1996. Fowler is to usage as Webster is to dictionary. The precursor to Modern English Usage, the Fowler brothers' book The King's English, is available online.
Mary-Claire van Leunen, A Handbook for Scholars, revised edition, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1992. This is essential reading if you are writing a research paper, a dissertation, or a vita.
The Chicago Manual of Style, fourteenth edition, University of Chicago Press, 1993. This is an authoritative, detailed guide to the fine points of writing style.
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | General style resources |