Free Online Writing Courses

Free writing courses split into academic writing, professional writing and creative writing, and it pays to know which you want before reading a syllabus. Academic courses teach structuring an argument, paragraphing, citing sources and revising. Professional courses cover emails, reports, proposals and plain-language style for the workplace. Creative courses work through fiction, poetry or screenwriting with exercises in character, scene and voice. Universities supply most of the academic and professional courses, usually on edX as free-to-audit courses where the lectures and prompts are open but graded work, peer review and the certificate are paid; some universities also publish free writing guides and lecture series with no credential.

Non-profit and commercial platforms offer self-paced writing courses free in full, with an optional certificate that usually costs money. Creative writing courses appear on all of these, and some are taught by working writers rather than academics. When reading a syllabus, look for how much you will write and how often, for whether there is any feedback loop, even automated or peer-based, and for the genre or context the course assumes. Writing suits students preparing for essay-heavy study, professionals who want clearer emails and reports, non-native speakers who already have conversational English, and anyone starting a creative project. The English page on this site covers grammar and language-learning courses that sit beneath this one.