I don't know about you guys, but before I joined Steemit I didn't write NEARLY as much as I used to at one time. The more time I have spent on here, the more I realized that I can't just pull content directly from the perpetual garbage can that is my brain without at least cleaning it up a little bit.
(Well, cleaning up the presentation. Not so much my bad language.)
Naturally, without proper practice, there are skills and knowledge that get buried in the sands of time.
Now, I am certainly not saying that I am some kind of accomplished writer or mastermind of literary devices. Shit, I wrote a story about Swamp Ass and have blogged about farts more than is probably acceptable.
But that is exactly why I am posting this, to help along the fellows like me. I am just going to give you a couple little websites as a helping hand to people dusting off their thinking meat, or those that are attempting to write for the first time. (FUCK YEAH! Go you!)
Without further ado, here are some websites and brief rundowns to help you get back into the groove!
Title Capitalization Tool
Pretty self explanatory but if you can't quite remember the rules for title capitalization this is a life saver. I know I am guilty of messing up the easiest of titles.
But lucky for you, we live in the land of technology!
"Making title capitalization easy. Automatically capitalize your email subjects, essay, headline, and article titles. Use Title Case, AP style, APA style, Chicago style, MLA style, and more."
https://capitalizemytitle.com/
Basic Thesaurus
I mean, this one pretty much goes without saying. In the world of writing, having a cornucopia of word fruit is as important as the writing itself. I find myself using a lot of words repeatedly and am trying to add to my vocabulary to spice things up. You should, too!
It is worth it to note that there are thesaurus apps on the market. These are very useful when you are in a conversation over your head and you need a $10 word to bring to the table.
http://www.thesaurus.com
Thesaurus.com is a great website that allows you to toggle between the thesaurus and dictionary with ease (Remember, kids, read your definitions). There are also links to their apps, words of the day, and some articles that are a great quick read.
Grammar Checker
I had a bit of a time trying to find a useful, free, online only grammar checker. However, while looking for tools to bring to my fellow Steemians, this one happened to pop up. And it is the fucking bomb. I have spent the last 20 minutes playing with it and have learned a lot about my sentence structures and common mistakes.
Bookmark this bad boy, you're going to want it.
AND it has a sense of humor.
https://virtualwritingtutor.com/
Some of the features include:
- Use speech recognition for hands free operation or to check your pronunciation.
- Hear how your text is pronounced with text-to-speech.
- Download your text as a text-to-speech MP3 file.
- Download your text as a .doc file.
- Count your words: there is no limit to the number of words you can count.
- Check your spelling.
- Check for grammar, punctuation and contextual spelling errors.
- Check your vocabulary: check for academic & conversational vocabulary, cliches and power words, field-related vocabulary, or target structures.
- Look up words in the Cambridge Dictionary.
- Retrieve past feedback and links to practice exercises
And for those with high ambitions and a little spare time:
There are a lot of free courses in writing and English literature available online. Tons of them also go at your own pace, so you can pick up a lesson after a long day at work, or a long day of laying around and doing nothing. I'm not judging.
But as a wise man once said to me "The day that you know everything about something, is the day that you're deadass wrong."
https://www.class-central.com/report/writing-free-online-courses/
(Nice little hodge podge of courses here to browse)https://www.edx.org/course/subject/literature
(Classes from HARVARD, FOR FREE?! Whatwhat?)http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/sentencestructure
(from a university but has a great rundown of sentence structure and educational videos)https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar
(A straight up course for grammar. I've heard great things about this site.)
Go forth, my friends, and learn! Improve your blogs! Write well structured letters to your local convicts! Add a dangling participle to street graffiti!
Whatever you want, I ain't your momma.
