Thirty per cent of people worry about making writing and spelling errors.

When I read the linked article this paragraph caught my attention.

"Failing to achieve key outcomes/goals was considered the worst mistake ever made (32 per cent) quickly followed by written errors and spelling mistakes (30 per cent).",

I thought that's a lot of stress, some of which can be avoided.

www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/featured/fear-of-failure-rife-in-business-reveals-survey.html

Over the years I've read of many people getting stress or grief from their spellcheckers. The most common being the use of "ize" spelling (which is a secondary spelling variation in Australia), which is considered by many as American spelling and incorrect. In particular this affects students.

If spelling is causing you grief, Word Check is the only online service enabling you to check to see if the word you're using is spelt using the preferred Australian English spelling. The Microsoft Office add-ins enable you to eliminate thousands of secondary spelling variations often considered errors. For more information visit www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling add-ins for Windows and Mac.

Be careful when reading articles online, even if they're on .com.au sites.

An article from Business Insider pop into my inbox which I thought would be interesting to share. As I was reading the article something didn't feel right. Some of the advice didn't seem right for Australia.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/21-spelling-tips-2015-5

Even though this article is on a .com.au site, Business Insider also has a .com site. The author of the article is Christina Sterbenz. Further checking reveals Christina lives in New York, so it starts to make sense that some of the content may not be correct.

If you search the internet for a part of the document, such as "These students spend months, sometimes years, studying for their big moments on the mic.", you'll see the article is being republished across the internet. For Australians the word "memorize" has been changed to "memorise", which is appropriate. But it is easy to change the obvious, but only an Australian editor/journalist would pick the less obvious differences in the language, that we as Australians will read as errors.

As you read the article there's small clues that catch your attention, which makes you suspect this isn't an Australian article. The first is the word "Anglicized". Yes they got "memorise" correct but they've not been thorough. Where the article really tripped me up is when they started talking about how we sound a word. That's when it didn't make sense as how Australians and Americans pronounce some words is different and it then became apparent this was an article that could mislead people.

Perhaps the worst piece of advice is to check the Oxford Online Dictionary. This is something you shouldn't do in Australia. We don't have a free online resource in Australia, but if you do check a word, use the printed Macquarie Dictionary and/or the Australian Oxford Dictionary.

There's some great information in the article which is very useful. However always keep in mind it you're not aware, you don't know what is good advice and what is bad advice. You'll start to absorb some of the bad advice and believe it to be true. That doesn't help you in the long run.

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