Learning English grammar can be difficult if you’re no longer in school. It can be challenging to absorb all those dry, seemingly random rules. Having great grammar is very important in order to be taken seriously, however, so you can’t remain willfully ignorant. Instead, there are some tools and resources available to help you improve your grammar and improve your writing.

First, put all your writing through a free grammar checker. This is the best way to begin to learn grammar, as you’ll understand your own weakness and chart out the extent of your grammar knowledge. These programs will highlight the places in your prose where you’ve made grammar errors. A grammar check program will then give you suggestions for fixing these errors. In the process, you’ll learn from your own mistakes and thus learn the rules of proper grammar that you have been missing. Keep a log of all the grammar rules you learn and periodically review it to allow the information to stick fresh in your mind.

For more complex and archaic rules, you may have to check with books and online resources that talk about the rules of English grammar. These books will give you plenty of examples to make the rules clear; though they may seem random, they usually are quite logical. Check your own writing for these grammar mistakes and correct them if the checker does not pick up on them.

Eventually, you’ll also want to review your own writing and see if you can pick out the grammar mistakes before the grammar checker does. This will indicate that you have absorbed the lessons you’ve learned so far.