National University of Singapore

Writing and Critical Thinking

Related Web Resources

Writing Programme Initiatives

• The Writing Centre

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Writing Academic Essays

• "Elements of the Essay" by Gordon Harvey

• Writing Tools by the Writing Center at Harvard University, which includes guides to topics such as "How to Do a Close Reading," "Developing a Thesis," and "How to Do a Comparative Analysis."

• Writing Center Handouts from the Writing Center at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which includes handouts on aspects of academic essays (like "Arguments" and "Logical Fallacies"), and ideas on writing for specific fields (for art history, philosophy, and sciences, for example).

• Writing Handbook by the Writing Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison, which includes ideas on how to write scientific reports and reviews of literature.

• Writing an Abstract by the Writing Center at Renselar Polytechnic Institute

• "Balanced Writing" by Stephen Donatelli. How should you move between detail and abstraction in an essay?

Working with Sources

• "Writing with Sources" by Gordon Harvey
  
  
• Research and Documentation Companion site to Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference, this suggests major databases for various subjects and shows how to document sources for papers written in the humanities, social sciences, history, and sciences.
  
  
• Evaluating Sources from Bedford/St Martin's.
  
  
• Using Sources from Yale College Writing Center
  
  
• Citing online sources with examples using different style guides, also from Bedford/St Martin's.
  
  
• Common Problems Encountered by Students in Using Online Resources by Harvey Molloy
  
  
• Writing with Internet Sources from Harvard University

   
Style and Grammar

• Punctuation Made Simple by Gary Olson
  
  
• "Tips on Grammar, Punctuation and Style" by the Writing Center at Harvard University
  
  
• Owl Exercises from Purdue University
  
  
• Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brians
  
  
• Get it Write Online Archive of articles about English Usage
  
  
• Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips by Mignon Fogarty

Dictionaries

• Oxford English Dictionary (only accessible if you are logged on within NUS)

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

• Merriam-Webster Online

Concordances
Unlike dictionaries, which give only the definition of a word, concordances give examples of how the word is commonly used in proper context.

• Corpus Concordance Sampler

• The British National Corpus Concordancer

Rhetoric

• Bibliographies for composition and rhetoric by Rebecca Moore Howard

Links to Other Writing Programmes

• Harvard Writing Expository Writing Programme