Is it licence plate or license plate?

A recent trip to the Queen Victoria Market showed us even government organisations get spelling wrong. As you approach the car park you see a sign displaying the parking rates. The bottom of the sign read: “LPR LICENSE PLATE RECOGNITION. LICENSE PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY IS USED IN THIS CAR PARK”.

Signs like this are read by hundreds, if not thousands of people per day. Viewers of the sign may consider the Melbourne City Council to lack care in their signs, or perhaps give an insight the supplier may be an American based company. Neither of these messages would be intended.

Interestingly, in Australia, according to a Google search of Australian sites ending in .au, the term number plate is used four times as often as licence plate. Using the phrase number plate recognition could have avoided the incorrect spelling license plate.

In Australia, it is good to remember licence with a ‘c’ is the noun and license with an ’s’ is the verb. The American spelling uses license with an ’s’, for both the noun and verb.

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