It’s  good to have a few reference tools at your fingertips when you are writing. When you include accurate details to your story, the story becomes more vivid and feels more authentic.

There is nothing more exciting to a reader than to find something they can relate to because they have experienced, saw, or remembered something similar in their own life. Below are three resources that I find useful from time to time.

Purdue OWL

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/738/
This site has links to dictionaries, manuals, handbooks, libraries, journal and online magazines.
This page contains links and short descriptions of writing resources including dictionaries, style manuals, grammar handbooks, and editing resources. It also contains a list of online reference sites, indexes for writers, online libraries, books and e-texts, as well as links to newspapers, news services, journals, and online magazines.

Refdesk
http://www.refdesk.com
This site has links from soup to nuts information. The list goes on and on. Automated news feeds, facts at a glance, dictionaries, calculators and a large list of other categories.
The American Society for Indexing

http://www.asindexing.org
This site has gathered many reference resources and list has them listed in an A to Z format.