11 Best Websites to Improve Writing Skills in English

We, humans are the most expressive creatures in the world, even the most introverted! We make use of both spoken and written words to convey our message across. The art of aptly describing what’s on your mind boils down to your writing or speaking abilities. While writing plain English is no challenge, eliminating the nuances from one’s writing to get the message across adequately is a challenge for many. While the best of the writers can capture the attention of readers with their succinct description of events, most of them struggle to find words or phrases to perfectly fall in place with the content.
Writing aptly is a skill and it goes beyond the simple use of grammar in your prose. While grammar forms an essential aspect of writing, there are more aspects of writing which must be taken off while working on it. Overuse of cliches, adverbs, bulky phrases, etc is some of the examples of poor writing and something which needs to be addressed. Writing is a form of art and like every other form of art, it takes time and perseverance to see through the toughest challenges you face while writing.

11 Awesome Websites to Help Improve English Writing Skills

Improving your writing skills broadens your horizons in both your personal and career-related pursuits. To help you improve writing skills in English, we have collected some of the best web-resources dedicated to this mission. Here are the top 11 Best Websites to improve your writing skills in English.

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is easily one of the best online resources to significantly improve your vocabulary and writing skills. Grammarly is basically an online word processor, which goes beyond your ordinary word processor in correcting your English mistakes. Grammarly fixes over 250 types of English errors, which the Microsoft Word application could not correct. The app also suggests synonyms for your chosen words to improve the context of the phrase.

• Check out detailed Grammarly review

Since Grammarly app is also available for your web browser, you can simply install the extension and have Grammarly edit all of your Emails, social media posts or any content that you create from your web browser. The spell-checker and vocabulary enhancer are the standout features of Grammarly that will definitely make you a better writer over time. Although Grammarly is offered as a free installation, a premium plan also does exist which costs around $29.95/month.
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2. Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl is one of the best web resources to help you improve your writing skills online. Although now renamed to QuickandDirtyTips, Grammar Girl is how this blog is known well. Mignon Fogarty, who is behind Grammar Girl, is a very well-known personality with different books and mobile apps to her name. Grammar Girl offers short and friendly tips to help you improve writing skills on the web. All the complex Grammar questions are answered adequately and interestingly by Grammar Girl.
Learn everything about English Grammar, from punctuation, vocabulary, writing style and other tips needed to make you a better writer. Although QuickAndDirtyTips now does cover a wide range of topics, Grammar Girl was solely dedicated to the act of making English grammar easy for everyone.
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3. The Purdue Writing Lab

Universities often have their very own writing centers on-campus to help people with their writing skills. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, or better known as the Purdue OWL is an online writing center dedicated to the mission of helping people with their writing skills. Purdue OWL provides users worldwide with their writing resources and guides. This website targets all of the common English grammatical queries arisen by people with their second language as English.
Tackling issues like Writer’s block, development of an outline, thesis writing, proofreading, etc are some of the topics covered by Purdue’s OWL. The website also is home to the APA and MLA style guides which are used worldwide for publishing thesis and dissertations. Divided into two sections – General writing and the Writing process, both of these cover issues that most of the people face while writing in English.
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4. Thesaurus

The Thesaurus is one of the vital tools that every good English writer has in their arsenal of tools for writing better. Building on your vocabulary is essential in becoming a better English writer and Thesaurus offers just that. Thesaurus helps users in becoming a better writer by providing alternative words and phrases to perfectly expressing yourselves in written English. Thesaurus offers the best collection of synonyms and antonyms that you could use to improve your vocabulary while writing in English.
Whatever your message might be, if you are looking to simplify your written English, Thesaurus will come to your help often times. This website also has a collection of some of the most overused words that you must avoid in your written English. Sharpen your English skills with this one powerful online and mobile application tool.
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5. Hemingway App

The Hemingway App is a wonderful web-based and desktop standalone software to help you edit your written English. The Hemingway App tackles a lot of nuances in English writing, like very complex sentences, uses of passive voice, overuse of adverbs, and much more. The standalone desktop software for Mac and Windows costs $9.99.
Note: This tool is also listed under ShoutMeLoud’s Mega Blogging tools list
The Hemingway app also provides a readability score for the entered text, which you could use to analyze the structure of the content you’ve written. Using Hemingway App, all of your wordy sentences are highlighted in yellow and extraneous content highlighted in red.
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6. Writers Digest University

If you are looking for professional online workshops to improve your English writing, Writer’s Digest University have the best of them. Writer’s Digest University initiative provide users with online workshops to improve their fiction, non-fiction, short stories and freelance writing work. Offering 76 online workshops across a huge range of topics, Writer’s Digest University’s courses come at a hefty price. With courses starting from $139 to going as high as $700, these courses will help you achieve the levels of a skilled writer.
Taught by professional and published authors, Writer’s Digest University offer some of the best online workshops. You can also browse through Writer’s Digest blog to receive latest updates and tips on writing better for free.
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7. Grammar Book

Grammar Book is another one of the best online resources to help you improve your writing skills. From punctuation rules to grammar quizzes and blog posts, Grammar Book has it all. The Grammar Book’s blog gets constantly updated every Tuesday with a new blog post about a grammar issue. Participate in the Grammar quizzes to improve your English grammar skills.
This website also offers ‘The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation’, to help you become a better English writer.
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8. Readability-Score

Your writing has to build a connection with your readers, or there is no point in your writings. Take any of your favorite articles on the web, these articles have the best prose and text layout, which only make you read more. Readability is an aspect of writing which many writers fail to take note of. No matter how grammatically correct maybe your sentences, taking the readability factor into consideration is essential in writing better English.
Readability-score is an online resource that helps writers calculate the readability scores of their entered text. On a scale of 0 to 100, this tool rates the content you entered for its readability factor, the higher your score, the better is your content.
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9. Aztekera Passive voice checker

Content in English is broadly classified into two types – Active and Passive voice. The active voice is the one that is more concise and straightforward. Use of passive voice more often hampers your written English to a huge extent. Aztekera offers a free online tool that helps you look out for the ‘To be’ verbs, that make up a passive voice phrase. Use this tool to eliminate the passive voice phrases in your writing.
The excessive use of passive voice might be the reason for the non-persuasive tone of your writing. Get rid of such form of writing using Aztekera Passive voice checker tool.
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10. Grammar Monster

Grammar Monster is one of the most resourceful tools on the web to help you with improving your writing skills. Whatever might be that you are trying to learn regarding English grammar, Grammar Monster has it all. With free resources in punctuation, apostrophe’s, commas, prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, etc., Grammar Monster features hundreds of articles across all of the said topics.
The easy-to-learn chunks of information presented on Grammar Monster make it one of the best online resources to improve one’s writing skills. Available entirely for free, anyone can make the most of the basic and the higher level English grammar skills listed on this website.
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11. Pro Writing Aid

Pro Writing Aid is one of the industry-standard text editing software, available as a free version for web interfaces. Edit your text online for up to 3000 words with their free web tool. Pro Writing Aid features some of the key aspects to a powerful text editing tool. This tool checks the entered content for plagiarism, usage of vague/abstract words, alliteration analysis and more, in addition to the regular spell-checking and other grammar tools.
Used by professionally published authors and editors, Pro Writing Aid is the best tool to amplify your English writing skills.

Chest Workout Exercises

Chest Anatomy
The chest or pectoralis muscle is a large flat, fan shaped muscle that covers the entire upper rib cage. It originates from attachments along our breast bone, collarbones, ribs, and it inserts on each side of your body via a large tendon through your shoulder joint to your upper arm bone.







Chest Exercises
It is essential that when you do any exercise that you perform the movements correctly, if you don't you will receive less then optimum benefit from the exercise. It is very difficult to unlearn bad exercise habits, so it is best to learn the right exercise technique from the very start.
For each chest workout pick 3 of these exercises and do 4-5 sets (including warm up sets) for each exercise. You can vary the exercises you do for each chest workout.




Bench Press
This is a great upper body exercise. It works the entire pectoral area, deltoids, and triceps. Secondary stress is applied to the latissimus dorsi muscles, biceps, and forearms to help stabilize and balance the barbell.






Place a barbell on the rack of a bench pressing bench. Lie back on the bench. Place your feet flat on the floor on each side of the bench. Grab the bar just a bit wider then shoulder width. Straighten your arms to lift the barbell off the rack. Position the bar so it is at arms length over your chest.
Lower the barbell until it touches your chest. As you lower the bar keep your elbows tucked so that your upper arms are at a 45-degree angles to the sides of your body. Do not let your upper arms go straight out to the sides because it will place too much strain on your shoulder joints. With out bouncing the bar off your chest push the bar up until it is back to the starting position. Repeat.
Tips - you should always have a training partner spot you when doing the bench press, just in case you need help lifting the barbell off your chest. For variety you can do this exercise with dumbbells instead of a barbell.








Incline Bench Press
This is very similar to the bench press, it works the same muscle groups (i.e. pectorals, deltoids, and triceps). Except the incline bench press works more of the upper chest.






Lie back on an incline bench pressing bench. Place your feet flat on the floor on each side of the bench. Grab the bar just a bit wider then shoulder width. Straighten your arms to lift the barbell off the rack. Position the bar so it is at arms length over you upper chest.
Lower the barbell until it touches your upper chest. As you lower the bar keep your elbows tucked so that your upper arms are at a 45-degree angles to the sides of your body. Do not let your upper arms go straight out to the sides because it will place too much strain on your shoulder joints. With out bouncing the bar off your chest push the bar up until it is back to the starting position. Repeat.
Tips - you should always have a training partner spot you when doing the incline bench press, just in case you need help lifting the barbell off your chest. For variety you can do this exercise with dumbbells instead of a barbell.








Decline Bench Press
This is very similar to the bench press, it works the same muscle groups (i.e. pectorals, deltoids, and triceps). Except the decline bench press works more of the lower chest.






Lie back on a decline bench pressing bench. Hook your feet in the foot pads on the end of the bench. Grab the bar just a bit wider then shoulder width. Straighten your arms to lift the barbell off the rack. Position the bar so it is at arms length over you lower chest.
Lower the barbell until it touches your lower chest. As you lower the bar keep your elbows tucked so that your upper arms are at a 45-degree angles to the sides of your body. Do not let your upper arms go straight out to the sides because it will place too much strain on your shoulder joints. With out bouncing the bar off your chest push the bar up until it is back to the starting position. Repeat.
Tips - you should always have a training partner spot you when doing the decline bench press, just in case you need help lifting the barbell off your chest. For variety you can do this exercise with dumbbells instead of a barbell.






Dips
This exercise works the entire chest area, but it emphasizes the lower chest. It also works the deltoids and triceps.






Grab a pair of parallel bars so the palms of your hands are facing each other. Straighten your arms and bend your knees. Support yourself between the bars.
Lean your torso forward as you do the exercise. Slowly bend your arms and lower your body between the bars until your elbows are at 90-degree angles. Hold this stretched position for a second. Steadily push yourself back up to the starting position. Repeat.
Note: this is an advanced exercise because you have to be able to lift your entire bodyweight. As you get stronger you can add extra weight to the exercise by hanging weights from your waist using a weight belt.






Dumbbell Flyes
This exercise works the entire chest area, but you can target specific areas of your chest depending on the angle of the bench. For example, a flat bench will target the entire chest, an incline bench will target the upper chest, and a decline bench will target the lower chest.






Grab 2 dumbbells and lie back on a bench. You may want to have a training partner hand the dumbbells to you to make it easier to get into position. Extend your arms straight above chest with the palms of your hands facing each other. Keep a slight bend in your elbows.
Without bending your arms, slowly lower the dumbbells in semicircular arcs until they are level with your shoulders. Do not overemphasize the stretch at the bottom of the rep because you could injure your shoulder joints. Using your chest strength bring your arms back together in semicircular arcs. Repeat.






Pec Deck Flyes
This exercise isolates the entire pectoral complex.






Adjust the seat to a height that places your upper arms parallel with the floor when you are seated. Sit down and grab the handles of the machine, keep a slight bend in the elbows. Allow the weight of the machine to pull your arms back to stretch your chest.
Using your chest strength bring your arms together in an arc motion until your hands touch in front of your chest. Hold this position for a couple of seconds to maximize the peak contraction in the chest. Slowly move your elbows back to the starting position. Repeat.






Push Ups
This is a basic exercise that works the entire chest area. Secondary stress is placed on the shoulders and triceps.






Lie face down on the floor. Place your hands palms down on each side of your body. Keeping your legs and torso in a straight line push yourself up and support your upper body on your arms.
Slowly lower yourself until your chest is about an inch from the floor. Hold this stretched position for a second. Push yourself back up to the starting position. Repeat.
This is a good exercise to use either as a warm up to your chest exercises or as a finishing exercise to really pump up your chest.