Homegrown Handouts address the most common questions tutees ask in the Writing Center. These handouts were created by our Writing Specialists or Writing Center faculty. If you have a particular topic you would like addressed, please send an e-mail to the Writing Center.

For more resources from other writing centers, visit our Online Resources section.

Grammar

• Adjectives [pdf]
• Adverbs [pdf]
• Appositives (Restrictive and Non-Restrictive) [pdf]
• Articles [pdf]
• Capitalization [pdf]
• Commonly Misused Words [pdf]
• Count and Noncount Nouns [pdf]
• Coordinating Conjunctions (FANBOYS) [pdf]
• Dangling Modifiers [pdf]
• Fewer or Less [pdf]
• Fragments [pdf]
• Independent Clauses in Compound Sentences [pdf]
• Nouns: The Basics [pdf]
• Nouns: Advanced [pdf]
• "Onto" versus "On To" [pdf]
• Passive Voice [pdf]
• Prepositions of Direction [pdf]
• Prepositions of Time [pdf]
• Present and Past Perfect Tense [pdf]
• Pronoun and Antecedent Agreement [pdf]
• Reflexive Pronouns [pdf]
• Subject-Verb Agreement [pdf]
• Subordinating Conjunctions in Complex Sentences [pdf]
• That vs. Which [pdf]
• Transitive and Intransitive Verbs [pdf]
• Verbs, Part One [pdf]

Punctuation

• Colons [pdf]
• Comma Splices and Run-ons [pdf]
• Contractions [pdf]
• Ellipses [pdf]
• End Punctuation [pdf]
• Hyphens [pdf]
• Parentheses and Brackets [pdf]
• Possessive Apostrophes [pdf]
• Quotation Marks [pdf]
• Semicolons [pdf]

Style

• Abbreviations [pdf]
• Concise Writing [pdf]
• Eliminating Wordiness [pdf]
• Expletive Words and Phrases [pdf]
• Nominalization [pdf]
• Old Information before New Information [pdf]
• Parallelism [pdf]
• Revising for Clarity: Characters and their Actions [pdf]
• Sentence Types [pdf]
• Synonyms for "Said" [pdf]
• Transition Words [pdf]

The Writing Process

• Argumentation: Premises and Conclusions [pdf]
• Comparing/Contrasting - Essay Planning [pdf]
• Comparing/Contrasting - Methods of Organization [pdf]
• Outlines - Essay Planning [pdf]
• Reporting Verbs [pdf]
• So What? [pdf]
• Summary Embedded in Analysis [pdf]

Other Writing Assignments and Concerns

• APA Formatting Guidelines [pdf]
• Essay Exam Preparation [pdf]
• MLA Formatting Guidelines [pdf]
• Personal Statements [pdf]

These handouts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may reproduce them for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (printed out for classroom use, for example) and attribute the source: The San José State University Writing Center.