Is it licenced or licensed?

The words licence and license causes a lot of confusion. I find it interesting when businesses pay a lot of money to have a sign made and the spelling isn't quite correct.


<<< photo missing >>>

In this case the sign should read "FULLY LICENSED".

Have you seen signs which catch your attention because of the spelling?

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 if you require help with your computer.
No problem too small.

Australian dictionaries for open source projects

I get the occasional request for dictionaries for open source projects. I just want to let people know I no longer support open source projects.

I had hoped that by helping others, others would assist me. All I found is the open source projects and the users took the material I provided and nearly all gave nothing back. Firefox was the worst example, not only taking the work but also changing the licence against my wishes. Google Chrome was not far behind. A link from Google to my project would have greatly assisted, but instead simply took my work consisting of hundreds of hours of effort and included it in their project.

All projects need to do is to link to the developers’ sites so the developers also gain for their efforts. Instead the projects take the material, include it in their projects where users have no idea of where the material came from and who is putting in the effort.

As a developer/consultant I make a living from developing software and providing computer support. Open source did not provide a means to generate income even though my work ended up  being used by hundreds of thousands of Australians.

I now only focus on producing dictionaries for clients. They are the people who help me pay the bills and I’m very grateful to my clients for their support.

My apologies to anyone for any inconvenience.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Make sure your spelling is correct when doing presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint.

Recently I attended a trade show where a number of people gave presentations. One person was a leading business coach and I’d guess they were being paid a very healthy fee to present. As I sat listening to his presentation and reading his slides there it was. A spelling error.

The problem is once you see a spelling error in the presentation your mind immediately wanders from the presentation.

To be fair, this wasn’t completely the presenter’s fault. None of us are perfect spellers and we tend to rely on our spellcheckers to pick up typos and spelling errors. In this case the presenter was obviously using Microsoft software for his presentation, because the spelling error is an error in the Microsoft spellchecker dictionary.

I produce an Exclude file which can be used with Microsoft Office products. The Exclude file helps people to determine if they are using the preferred Australian English spelling. There are thousands of Australian English words which can be spelt two or more ways and Microsoft’s spellchecker dictionary correctly enables people to use their chosen spelling. It is just that most people don’t know there is a preferred Australian English spelling. In addition, there are a number of errors in the Microsoft spellchecker dictionary which are also corrected with the use of the Exclude file.

Given the cost and time involved of preparing for the presentations and travelling to multiple cities across Australia, for just $10 this error could have been avoided.

For those who are interested the word used was “fulfillment” which is the American spelling. This spelling is allowed if Australians are using Microsoft software, but the correct spelling is “fulfilment”.

 

You can obtain the Microsoft Exclude file from the JustLocal site (www.JustLocal.com.au) or use the direct link http://www.justlocal.com.au/clients/mswordexcl.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Creator and maintainer of the preferred Australian English spelling dictionary.