Essential resources for writing non-fiction

When it comes to writing non-fiction, there are all sorts of resources and tools that can be beneficial to you during the process – whether you’re carrying out early research, are entrenched in the writing process, or if you’re revising and preparing your work for publication.

Some parts of the non-fiction writing process can require special tools to make the process go more smoothly – if you’re writing a piece of work with footnotes and citations, you may benefit from a tool to organise them.

Here are the essential resources for writing non-fiction that I’d recommend as a professional editor.

Style and formatting tools

If you’re writing material for a specific field, you’ll want to know the specialist style guide to use in your writing (a copyeditor can help you refine this). This style guide is a set of rules around punctuation, grammar, formatting and other editorial choices. Some examples of these are:

• APA style: Used in scholarly writing such as psychology and the social sciences, and in scientific journals.
• MLA style: Another style used in scholarly writing, for fields including the humanities and literature, media and cultural studies, modern languages, and more.
• MHRA style: A UK-focused style guide for the humanities and literature and cultural studies.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS): The standard style guide for American English, used for all sorts of material from novels to trade non-fiction books, journals, and academic books.
• New Hart’s Rules (Oxford style): An English-language style guide, mainly used for UK English. Again, this style guide is used for a wide range of material including trade and creative non-fiction books.
• Capitalize My Title: A tool that can help you format your chapter/section headings depending on the style guide you’re following.

A more exhaustive list of style guides can be found here.

Research tools

Research is a crucial element of non-fiction writing, as is making sure you have clear and accurate sources. The following tools can assist you with your research, lending more credibility to your writing.

• JSTOR: JSTOR is a popular online resource and digital library that allows you to search through primary sources including books and journals. If you belong to an institution, you can usually access the full site via your institution. A free account limits you slightly in terms of what you can do on the site.
• Google Scholar: Google Scholar is a helpful tool for searching through scholarly literature and journals. Once you have searched for a source, there’s also a helpful button for citing that source in a range of different styles.
• WorldCat: A search tool for finding materials in libraries near you. However, it can also be helpful for verifying your citations and making sure these are accurate, if you search for the title of the work you’re citing.

Dictionaries and language resources

This may seem like an obvious one, but it’s especially important to be using the right dictionary if you’d like to keep regional spelling and hyphenation choices intact – for example, there are lots of differences in US English and UK English that fall outside of the typical spelling differences everyone knows about (such as color and colour).

Dictionaries and language resources can also be essential if you’re writing non-fiction involving history, as they can help you trace how words and meanings have changed over time and what might be most appropriate for you to use in your writing.

• Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary: For US spelling and grammar.
• The Oxford English Dictionary (OED): For UK spelling.
• The Historical Thesaurus of English: To trace how words and their meanings have changed over time, from the early medieval period to the present. You can also use this tool to look up obscure words that you may not find elsewhere.

Citation and reference tools

Citations and references are important for ensuring that your work is credible to its audience. There are a number of tools you can use to check for accuracy and to help you organise them.

• Zotero: Zotero is a free tool you can use to collect your research in one place and keep this organised – you can sort research into collections and use keywords as tags. It can also create references and bibliographies.
• Mendeley: A reference manager for organising and keeping track of your references.

Quote and fact-checking resources

• Google Books: You can use Google Books to search within published works to verify phrasing and check quotes.
• Quote Investigator: It’s fairly common for quotes to be attributed to the wrong person – this tool allows you to look up well-known quotes and double-check who actually said them.
• Full Fact and PolitiFact: You can use these tools to verify political claims, statistics, and news events.

A closing warning on AI and non-fiction writing

I would caution anyone writing non-fiction to be careful when it comes to using AI as a tool, in particular for research. AI is showing up in all of our search engines now, so it’s hard to avoid when looking something up, but it’s known to “hallucinate” (meaning to make up information or facts that aren’t true). This can often lead to quite serious consequences.

Incorrect information in non-fiction writing can make you less credible as a writer, and can impact audience trust, so it’s important to make sure you use more legitimate sources and don’t rely on AI search results for facts.

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I hope you’ve found these non-fiction writing tools and resources useful.