Sites we like

Fun

Dialectizer

This ingenious device will translate any web page into the dialect of your choice. We particularly recommend Cockney and Jive. 'Scool bro.

Wordwizard

An entertaining, sometimes-scurrilous, sometimes-useful forum for people who like words. If you want to know the origins of a word or phrase (such as 'frogmarch') you can post it here and the members, who range from obvious imbeciles to impeccable scholars, will respond.

Lucy Kellaway

If you work with words or large companies, and we do both, then Lucy Kellaway is essential reading. She's funny, down-to-earth and capable of skewering whole industries with a rattle of her typewriter. The FT makes you pay to read her, but you can listen to her reading a selection of her columns for free.

Style guides

The Times Style and Usage Guide

This is a very thorough style guide: solid, traditional and unlikely to cause exception. Sometimes it is rather old-fashioned - for example, it prefers 'an hotel' to 'a hotel' - so use it for traditional or pedantic audiences. It is organised alphabetically, but with separate sections for the armed forces, royal and noble titles, politics, etc.

The Guardian's style guide

The Guardian's style guide is much less conservative than The Times'. Its preferences are often clearer, fresher and more modern than those of The Times, which makes it more suitable for younger, more informal audiences. It is organised alphabetically.

The Economist Style Guide

This style guide is broken down by subject, which makes it very easy to look up general rules. It strikes a pragmatic balance between formality and approachability, quoting Emerson in its section on capitals: 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds'. Use this with general and corporate audiences. It is organised by subject.

Grammar guides

The Open University's English for learning

This is an admirably clear and easy guide to basic writing skills and effective use of English.

Get It Right

This is the most comprehensive and useful guide to the mechanics of grammar and writing that we could find. It was produced by the University of Central Lancashire's Department of Journalism for its own students, but the whole thing is available online. You can even take a quick proofreading test.

Miscellaneous

Plain English Campaign

An independent pressure group fighting for public information to be written in plain English.

Bartleby.com - Great Books Online

Read out-of-copyright books online without paying. This is a wonderful site: where else can you go and read the Lovesong of Alfred J. Prufrock or the Song of Songs, the Arabian Nights or Don Quixote? There are also many reference books, including dictionaries, Fowler's The King's English and a fascinating book of etiquette from the '20s. If you can't find something, try Project Gutenberg instead.

Abebooks - Passion for books

If you're looking for a book - the obscurer the better - come here. This site links to the stock lists of thousands of second-hand bookshops all over the world (don't worry - it tells you about the ones in the UK first). Type in what you're after and the site will present dozens of editions at all sorts of different prices, and you can order it then and there.

Common Errors in English Usage

From Paul Brians' book of the same name, this site lists just about every mistake you could possibly make, and gives the correct version.

WordIQ.com

A searchable online dictionary, with an excellent thesaurus. Unfortunately, it mainly uses US English, but the British spellings are usually given too.

The London Review of Books

This is the best magazine in the world. You can browse through their articles online.

Wikipedia

Whatever you want to know about, this free online encyclopaedia is usually the best place to look first. It's written by its users, but is surprisingly accurate - and if you disagree with something, you can change it.