Is the spelling cyberattack, cyber attack or cyber attack?

Whilst editing a document I came across the spelling cyber-attack and wondered if it was the preferred Australian English spelling.

First a check of the Macquarie dictionary lists cyber attack as the primary spelling and cyberattack as a secondary spelling. No mention of cyber-attack, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be used as an adjective.

A search using Google for sites ending in .au, returns around 150,000 results for cyber attack and 40,000 results for cyberattack.

Based on these results the preferred spelling in Australia is cyber attack. Now there's something to ponder if someone stacks attacking your computer.

Cyber attack and cyber attacks have now been added to Word Check to help those wishing to use the preferred Australian English spelling.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.

How do you spell australia? How to spell australia?

"How do you spell australia" and "how to spell australia" are two very common queries on Google Search. Now let's say that perhaps you didn't know the first letter needed to be capitalised, what's an easy way to check.

I've created the preferred Australian English dictionary which is a free online resource. You can check the spelling of a word and the suggestions provided should give you the answer you need. For example, click on the following link to check the spelling of the word "australia".

Check how to spell australia

A list of spelling suggestions is provided.

As can be seen the first suggestion is the correct way to spell "australia", including the correct capitalisation.

Hopefully that answers the question.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

Jim Carry describes Will Smith slapping Chris Rock as "it cast a pall".

Apart from the fact that I believe there's no excuse for violence I've refrained from commenting about the Will Smith/Chris Rock altercation.

Quite often I come across a word or word usage that I'm not familiar with and today I read a quote from Jim Carry which used the word "pall". As I didn't know the meaning of "pall" I decided to check the meaning of the word. The good thing is you can often deduce the meaning of the word from the context where the word is used. My first feeling was it cast a bad feeling over the situation.

Jim Carrey ‘sickened’ by standing ovation for Will Smith at Oscars after Chris Rock slap | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

The word "pall" has a few meanings. One from the Macquarie dictionary is "to become insipid, distasteful, or wearisome". However, a meaning from the online Oxford dictionary, "Something regarded as enveloping a situation with an air of gloom or fear", I felt was also apt.

I've always found it's good to look up the meaning of words when you find a new word or a word is used in a way you wouldn't expect. I've often found people arguing over the meaning of a word when in fact both are right. It's just that often we assume a word has only one meaning and that is the meaning we know.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

Wordle Help or Wordle Helper now available.

 Wordle has taken the world by storm. If you haven't heard of Wordle you probably soon will.

Basically Wordle is a word puzzle where you get six guesses to guess the five letter word. Each round you enter a word and you receive clues. The letters in the correct position show as green and the correct letters in the incorrect position show as yellow. Letters that aren't in the word are shown as grey.

TIP: The word you're trying to guess might have multiple duplicate letters but the clues you receive may or may not help you identify a letter is used twice. In other words don't rule out letters may be used multiple times in the word you're trying to guess.

Now of course for the fun of it we shouldn't use an aid to help solve the Wordle but sometimes it's just fun if you can't figure a puzzle out to get some help. Wordle Help or Wordle Helper has been written for those situations.

Wordle Help/Wordle Helper will only help if you have the correct letters in the correct position. But once you have two or more correct letters in the correct position Wordle Help can return the possible list of five letter words found in the preferred Australian English spelling dictionary.

You can find Wordle Help at www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au/wordlehelp.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

Is the spelling sanitizer or sanitiser?

The main time I tend to use hand sanitiser, or is that hand sanitizer, is when I’m on a cruise before I eat. I’ve also used it when visiting people in a hospital, or in an aged care facility. It makes sense.

However, now with COVID-19, all that has changed and now it becomes part of your regular routine.

The question then is, is the Australian spelling with the ‘s’ or the ‘z’?

A check of Google for sites ending in .au for the words sanitiser and sanitizer, returns 1.19 million results for the ‘s’ spelling and 464,000 for the ‘z’ spelling.  A check of the Australian Oxford Dictionary and the Macquarie Dictionary for the words sanitise and sanitize, gives us sanitise with the ‘s’ as the primary spelling and sanitize with the ‘z’ as the secondary spelling.

In Australia the preferred spelling uses the ‘s’ for the word sanitiser and its various forms.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

Question received regarding how often the dictionary files are updated and the upgrade policy.

I received two questions recently regarding the dictionary files I produce. I thought the questions were very good and I wanted to share the answer with everyone.

The questions were:

How often are the files updated?

What is the upgrade policy?

Now in my ideal world I'd have lots of people purchasing the dictionary files which would enable me to put in the time required to release regular updates. Ideally, I wanted to make the updates free for anyone who had purchased the files.

Unfortunately my ideal world and reality don't match very well. I understand that people won't understand the time involved in finding and researching the words I include or exclude from the dictionary files. Each word is reviewed, but some words reviewed can take quite a long time to review. The time involved is considerable.

For this reason it's not viable for me to simply provide free updates. The time to update the documentation and the files packaged as zip files also takes some time.

To be frank, the money from sales each year would not cover the time involved each year.

For this reason, at this stage, I feel the best approach is for people to purchase the current release for the relatively small cost. The package received is better than anything else currently available in my humble opinion. Then in a couple of years time, if there's sufficient changes to the newly released files, people are then welcome to purchase the new release. Those benefiting from the work I do are then contributing to the ongoing development.

When a new release is available I will send out an email to everyone who has purchased the relevant files and let them know the update is available. Whether they purchase the update or not is entirely their choice.

In terms of how often the updates occur I have no clear answer, but I would say for the actual packages I sell it would be a number of years. It's is currently nearly four years since the last update was released.

Word Check, which is the online tool available to everyone for free, is updated regularly with new words added (a few have been removed), as I find words and research the words to see if the words should or shouldn't be included.

I hope this answers the questions for anyone who is interested.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictonary.com.au

Is the spelling barbeque or barbecue?

Australia Day is a day to relax and have friends over for a barbeque, or is that barbecue?

A search using Google for sites ending in .au, returns around 3.7 million results for barbeque and 17.3 million results for barbecue. Microsoft Word allows both barbecue and barbeque as valid spellings.

The Oxford and Macquarie dictionaries list barbecue as the primary spelling and barbeque as a secondary spelling. The Macquarie dictionary notes there’s greater use of the secondary spelling barbeque in Australia, than there is in the US or UK.

The preferred spelling in Australia is barbecue. Now there’s something to ponder whilst grilling the snags on Australia Day.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.