English grammar and mechanics is a two-edged tool. It works when you try to understand more precisely what others are saying in the printed word, and it works when you try to express your own ideas most effectively to others.

Unless you are planning to become an English-language scholar, the subject is better handled as a tool for personal learning and personal expression. (As opposed to using it as a weapon for jabbing at the creative efforts of others).

Related topics located elsewhere at Free-Ed.Net:

• English Literature
• English as a Second Language

Creative writing is one of the primary mediums for personal expression, including art, music, dance, and drama. You will find that we have divided the department into two sections: Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction.

A piece of fiction is, of course, is a story. There may be elements of truth included in a piece of fiction, but the overarching nature is ... well ... fictional.

Creative non-fiction expresses actual events, circumstances, and facts as the author understands them. A book describing the chemical elements would clearly be a work of non-fiction; however, a book describing a personal alien abduction might be considered non-fiction from the author's point of view, but a work of fiction by many other people.

Related topics located elsewhere at Free-Ed.Net:

• Report Writing
• Journalism

For our purposes here at Free-Ed.Net, academic writing is a special form of report writing that applies to (surprise!) academic topics—from reviews of Shakespeare's sonnets to the latest developments in string theory. The audience for academic writing is much narrower than for creative non-fiction. Also, the rules for grammar, mechanics, and composition are much more strict.

Technical writing covers everything from formal descriptions of the hydraulics for spacecraft to microwave instructions on a package of frozen lobster bisque. Here, too, precision and clarity are extremely important, and thus the need for mastering the actual rules of grammar and composition.

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