Some resources I need.

I am looking for three resources:

1. A complete reference grammar of the English language.

2. A dictionary dealing with meaning and usage.

3. An excellent thesaurus with synonyms and antonyms.

I prefer them to be online, accessible for free, and dealing with standard, modern English.

Can anyone help?

 

1) Unfortunately, this may be complicated. English is a messy language and every rule has an exception.
2) type "define:word" into google and hit search, it's a built-in feature.
3) type "synonym word" into google. I do that all the time, google parses the top hit and gives you the info you need.

 

For 2) and 3), Merriam-webster.com is my preferred resource. It's a dictionary and thesaurus, and the thesaurus is really good. You type in your word, hit "thesaurus" and the result includes antonyms as well.

As for 1), just one book won't do it. As @newjerseyrunner said, there are many contradictions in rules. It also depends on what type of writing you want to do. Academic voice is different from other types of writing, and the English you learn in a college composition classes is different than what is needed for contemporary fiction...which is different from newspaper writing...which is different from magazine writing...which is different from online writing...so you need references for what you plan to write. (Comma placement for print newspapers is different than what one learns in English Comp class, for example.)

I have two whole shelves of them, but the ones I use the most are, in order of frequency:

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White

Chicago Manual of Style (updated regularly & I need to renew my online membership)

A Grammar Book for You and I (Oops, Me) by C. Edward Good (this one is great because it teaches how to break the rules to be conversational, as well as conventional academic voice)

Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (this one is actually a punctuation guide that was a British best seller)

The Little, Brown Handbook (this is actually a college textbook)

Edit: forgot the word print in front of newspapers

 

Write something, and read a book written in the past fifty years.

 

The OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab is a good resource I used a lot in school.

 

Every language is messy and complicated, and linguists still wrote comprehensive grammars for some of the most obscure ones out there.

 

The dictionary you want, need, must have, crave, and will love forever is the complete Oxford English Dictionary. This is it: the be-all and end-all, alpha and omega, mother of all English dictionaries. I have a copy of the Compact OED2 (the "nine-up" referred to in the Wikipedia article linked), and it could easily serve as the cornerstone of a major building. Still, woooah, eh? Woooah!!

 

I used to do this - post for the sake of posting. Still do in the garbage threads.

All the things the OP needs could be at his fingertips within minutes, and I'm sure he knows this.

 

Thanks everybody for your responses.

ChickenFreak, I don't know why you keep repeating the same thing even when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It doesn't make me want to take your advice.

 

The problem is not the advice itself. It's the fact that she keeps repeating the same sentence so much that it sounds rude. I asked a question about dictionaries, thesauruses and grammar, to which she responded with a statement that was completely irrelevant and unnecessary. It may be, for all you know, that I did not even intend to write much of anything, but was simply looking for these resources for purposes dealing with a short piece of writing, such as a sentence. Any statement about my previous threads, or my intentions expressed in previous threads, do not belong here.

Also, the advice in her statement was not the advice I was talking about, but the advice she has given me in other threads, advice which says that I should abandon all focus on rhythm, advice which I do not have to take, regardless of whether I want to write.

 

There was every sign that my behavior had changed until now. I was not arguing with anyone, but was accepting critiques and revising my work.

The poem I wrote was not intended to be a serious complaint about the members of this forum, nor was it intended to offend anyone. You took it too seriously when it was nothing more than a writing exercise.

Reaping what you sow is a natural consequence, not a justification for vengeance by those who are not God.

I apologize for misrepresenting advice.

 

There was no such sign; there was a pretense. And, "until now"? Meaning, now you'll drop the pretense?

 

There was no pretense. But honestly if this is how the community of writingforums.org is, (and many others have left here with complaints), I don't want to be bothered with it anymore. I will go some place else.

 

I've never seen an American-spelling OED. I grew up in Canada and most of our spellings were British, so that worked out fine. I've used British dictionaries my whole life and have made accommodation for American spelling where it seems appropriate (jail for gaol, tire for tyre, etc.). I think most modern British dictionaries list American spellings alongside the British ones.

 

True in terms of completeness, but writing classes I took in college, as well as some print newspapers, required Merriam-Webster for consistency's sake (because not everyone could afford the hard copy of Oxford, and online dictionaries did not yet exist).

So, for the OP, when it comes to resources, always consider what publication you're targeting. That's extremely important.