Links to Language Sites (Mostly)
 
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Notes about this page

Almanacs Top of this page

Archives Top of this page

Audio references Top of this page

Collections of Web links Top of this page

Color charts Top of this page

  • Analytical Q's list of color guides
  • Color saturations Various saturations, with hex codes, of primary and complementary colors.
  • Colors for web pages See 140 named colors that are acceptable to HTML web browsers, displayed against 140 background colors. Or, see 4096 colors, identified by number.
  • Lynda's browser-safe colors The Browser-Safe Palette only contains 216 colors out of a possible 256. That is because the remaining 40 colors vary on Macs and PCs. By eliminating the 40 variable colors, this palette is optimized for cross-platform use.

Dictionaries Top of this page

  • American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, from Bartleby.com.
  • British-American dictionary compiled by Mark Glicksman
  • British-American dictionary
  • Cambridge International Dictionary of English This may be the only available source for American pronunciations using the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's apparently a relatively elementary student's dictionary; don't look in it for "paronomasia", "syllepsis", "zeugma", or "allophone".
  • The Century Dictionary "An encyclopedic dictionary of English considered by many to be the finest ever produced in the US." – Oxford Companion to the English Language
  • dictionary.com This source provides definitions from a number of different dictionaries. In particular, it apparently accesses the complete contents of The American Heritage Dictionary Third Edition, including the discussions of Indo European roots that may be unique to that dictionary. You can go directly to the dictionary lookup, as illustrated by the following example, which will find definitions for 'enclitic': http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=enclitic
  • Famous People: Biographies for Over 130,000 Famous People
  • TheFreeDictionary.com English, Medical, Legal, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, a Literature Reference Library, and a Search Engine all in one!
  • Glossarist "a searchable directory of glossaries and topical dictionaries"
  • History of Webster's Dictionary, from Noah Webster's 1828 first edition through the controversy over Webster's Third New International.
  • Hyperdictionary One-step lookup for an English Dictionary, a Computer Dictionary, a Thesaurus, a Dream Dictionary, and a Medical Dictionary
  • Hypertext Webster Gateway Online dictionary
  • Information Please dictionary and encyclopedia
  • Latin dictionary online Copyright (C)1997 The University of British Columbia Mathematics Department Individual pages and projects are Copyright by their respective creators, as noted. Also, Java-based interactive version.
  • Macquarie Dictionary on line (by subscription only)
  • Merriam-Webster Online
  • Onelook automatically searches many dictionaries for the word you enter.
  • Onelook also has a list of links to dictionaries and to lists of links to dictionaries.
  • The Sharpened Glossary of Computer and Internet Terms A Dictionary of Computer Terms with Easy-To-Understand Definitions.
  • The Tech Terms Computer Dictionary where computer and technology terms are defined and explained.
  • The University of Paderborn
  • Webster's 1828 dictionary Christian Technologies, Inc.
  • Wordnet Lexical Database. In addition to definitions, this site offers synonyms, coordinate terms, hypernyms, hyponyms and familiarity.
  • WordReference.com Uses Collins dictionaries to provide English definitions and translations (French, German, Italian, and Spanish).
  • yourDictionary.com

Discussion groupsTop of this page

  • The Official misc.writing Web Site misc.writing ("mw") is a Usenet newsgroup that provides a forum for discussion of writing in all its forms - scholarly, technical, journalistic, artistic and mere day-to-day communication. It is a venue for professional writers, would-be professionals and all those who write to communicate.
  • The sci.lang FAQ What is sci.lang for? Discussion of the scientific or historical study of human language(s). Note the "sci." prefix. The main concern here is with facts and theories accounting for them.
  • Unmoderated linguistics list An unmoderated mailing list for discussing all aspects of linguistics. So if you want to talk about language acquisition, philosophise about the nature of linguistics or just get your own particular pet peeve about language off your chest, this is the place.
  • The Word Wizard If you're fascinated by anything to do with words, then join our club, use our (FREE) services and have fun with other like-minded people.

Encyclopedias Top of this page

  • Britannica 1 August 2001: Britannica is no longer free online. The URL that formerly provided the free access now offers a paid subscription.
  • Electric Library presents Encyclopedia.com
  • Encarta Concise Free Encyclopedia. Your gateway to 16,000 abridged reference articles and our world atlas
  • Information Please dictionary and encyclopedia

Fun with words Top of this page

  • The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
  • Clichés The Book of Clichés
  • A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia, by Jeff Miller
  • The Eggcorn Database An eggcorn is an unusual spelling of a particular kind, such as free reign (instead of free rein) or hone in on (instead of home in on).
  • Fun with Words from RinkWorks.
  • Generate random sentences: The web economy bullshit generator, the automatic press release generator, and the Postmodernism generator
  • Mondegreens from Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
  • Pronunciation tips Have fun with quizzes on the use of the SAMPA ASCII IPA alphabet.
  • Tom Swifties by Mark Wutka
  • Word-Origin Game In this game you'll be presented with 10 randomly selected word origin or word definition puzzles to solve; in each case the word or phrase is highlighted in bold, and a number of possible explanations for its origin will be presented.

Guides: Usage, Grammar, and Style Top of this page

Humor Top of this page

Learning English Top of this page

  • Dave's ESL Cafe for people learning or teaching English as a second language. Various courses for pay.
  • ELT Web, English Language Teaching, a variety of resources.
  • Irregular English Verbs, Lists and tools for learning.
  • Language help Up-to-date and very extensive language help from Ruth Vilmi in Helsinki
  • Taiwan Teacher 'This page has a great set of EFL, ESL teaching and learning links all neatly organised and categorised to make the choosing easy.'

Lexicons Top of this page

Measurement conversion Top of this page

Miscellaneous, language related Top of this page

Miscellaneous, not language related Top of this page

News Top of this page

Online reference books Top of this page

Online services Top of this page

  • Anagram Genius Give it a string and your e-mail address; it e-mails an anagram of the string to you.
  • Ask a Linguist Ask-A-Linguist is a service provided by The LINGUIST List, an Internet network for professional linguists. Although the list itself is restricted to messages relating to linguistic research, many LINGUIST List members are interested in language-related questions of all kinds; and a number of these have volunteered to staff this page. Ask-A-Linguist is designed to be a place where anyone interested in language or linguistics can ask a question and get the response of a panel of professional linguists.
  • Lydbury English Centre – On Line Grammar Home Page
  • Text analyser Enter text; it analyzes it
  • Wordsmith.Org Various word-related services by e-mail

Phonetic alphabets Top of this page

Rhetoric vocabulary Top of this page

Spelling Top of this page

Thesauruses Top of this page

  • WordNet - a Lexical Database for English. The word "thesaurus" only begins to connote the sort of work that WordNet is. To fully appreciate it, you need to spend some time with it.

Urban legends Top of this page

Web-design utilities Top of this page

  • ASCII character codes ASCII characters illustrated with character codes for HTML
  • HTML A Beginner's Guide
  • HTML-Kit is a free and easy to use Windows program designed to help HTML authors to edit, format, lookup help, validate, preview and publish web pages.
  • HTML advice from Lynda
  • HTML help from Ruth Vilmi in Helsinki, a list of links to HTML-help sites.
  • W3C HTML Validation Service It checks HTML documents for conformance to W3C HTML and XHTML Recommendations and other HTML standards.
  • World Wide Web Consortium, all about it.

Web search engines Top of this page

Word lists Top of this page

Words about words Top of this page

Notes Top of this page

This page was adapted by Bob Cunningham from the Language Resources list in Markus Laker's AUE Resources package. Bob writes:

"I've partitioned the list into categories. Within each category all links have been alphabetized, with leading 'a's and 'the's being ignored.  Some language-related links have been left uncategorized, either because they seemed too difficult to categorize or because I haven't yet made a determined effort to categorize them.  Some links that Markus described as having 'nothing to do with language' have been left as a group."