Directories, search engines, and reference aids

Search engines for editors and writers
Search engines for everyone
Power tools
Lists of links on writing, editing, and publishing

Search engines for editors and writers
Britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com Quick, encyclopedic access to articles, related maps, illustrations. Index feature gives you quick access to related content. Free, but the pop-ups swarm like gnats. Subscription site (www.eb.com) is gnat-free.

Library of Congress online catalog. http://catalog.loc.gov That's right, the entire catalog is online. Amazing depth and scope, plus great advice on effective searching.

LibrarySpot.com. http://www.libraryspot.com Quick access to libraries of all stripes (academic, film, law, government) and a reference desk with everything from acronyms to zip codes. Plus lists, shortcuts, FAQs, news—all compiled with the perspective and acuity of a reference librarian.

Refdesk.com. http://www.refdesk.com An effort—promethean and quixotic—to present links to everything you might conceivably need to know. The alphabetization emphasizes the heterogeneity. The best stuff's below the fold.

yourDictionary.com. http://www.yourdictionary.com/index.shtml With 1,800 dictionaries in 250 languages, yourDictionary has a credible claim to being "the language portal of record." Verify the spelling of "supersede," and if you suddenly need a Breton or Chamorro grammar, they're there, too.

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Search engines for everyone
Ask Jeeves–Ask.com. http://www.askjeeves.com Separate tabs for searchers, browsers, and those who like to ask the experts.

Google. http://www.google.com Nothing but searches, so it loads quickly. (Web and newsgroup directories are accessible from subordinate pages.) Billions and billions served.

Lycos Reference. http://www.lycos.com/reference Weather, maps, city guides, almanacs, government directors and statistics, yellow and white pages. Others of the ilk: Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com, InfoSpace http://www.infospace.com, 411.com http://411.com.

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Power tools
Acronym and Abbreviation Server http://www.ucc.ie/acronyms/acro.html and Acronym Finder http://www.acronymfinder.com You get the idea, but beware the MIRV-ed pop-up ads.

ClearInk SpellWeb. http://www.spellweb.com Can't decide between alternative spellings of "e-mail"? Turn style into a popularity contest by seeing how words are spelled on the Web.

Copyrights. http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright From the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress Information System, learn how to search records for materials registered for copyright since January 1978.

Digital Integrity. http://www.findsame.com Originality test: Enter text or upload a file, and the site will return a list of Web pages that contain any fragment of that text longer than about a line.

Invisible Web Revealed. http://library.rider.edu/scholarly/rlackie/Invisible/Inv_Web.html Find out how to locate Web material to which conventional search engines are blind. Also see Gary Price's direct search, http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm which provides links to the search interfaces of resources that contain data not easily or entirely searchable using general Web search tools.

Online Conversion. http://www.onlineconversion.com Distance, weight, temperature—yeah, yeah, we know. But torque, viscosity, and flow rate? Hey, these are serious conversions. Also Morse code, download times, and other exotica.

Questia. http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp Student subscribers "write in the margins" or highlight their personal online copies of Questia's full-text library. The tool automatically creates footnotes and reference lists conforming to APA, MLA, and other popular styles.

Trademarks. http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm Search for trademarks at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Turnitin.com. http://www.turnitin.com Generates color-coded "originality reports" after comparing submitted text to internet sources and a growing database of student papers. Coming: an online grading system!

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Lists of links on writing, editing, publishing
Alt.usage.English Language Resources. http://www.alt-usage-english.org/categorized_links.shtml Hundreds, nay thousands, of links.

Grammar Links on the Internet. http://www.ateg.org/grammar/links.htm From the grammar section of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Purdue Online Writing Lab. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/internet/index.html Links page of a leading academic writing center.

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