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.

Is the spelling financer or financier?

Whilst editing a document recently I noticed the spelling financer and financier in the same paragraph. I couldn't help think is this a difference in usage, or perhaps a spelling issue.

Checking the Macquarie and Australian Oxford dictionaries there is no mention of financer, but financier is included in both dictionaries. Checking online dictionaries including the Merriam Webster (American), Oxford (UK) and Collins, none include financer. The only online resource to include financer was Wiktionary, but as Wiktionary isn't a reliable authoritative resource, you need to take care putting any credence on whether or not it is a correct spelling.

Microsoft Word's spellchecker marks both financer and financier as correctly spelled words, which is one reason people may inadvertently use financer and think they've used the correct spelling, when they really should have used the word financier.

A check of Google for Australian sites (sites ending in .au) produces 872,600 results for financier and 42,700 for financer.

As there is no reference in any of the authoritative references to the spelling financer, this would tend to lead us to accept financer is a spelling error and financier is the correct spelling.

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

Is the spelling ANZAC, Anzac, or anzac?

The word ANZAC is an acronym for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. An acronym expectedly consists of the capitals for each word. Interestingly, we also have Anzac, which has an initial capital to refer to people, places, or other uses, other than the specific Corps. For example Anzac Day, Anzac biscuits and the Anzacs.

Spelling the word anzac using only lower case is a spelling error.

Interestingly, in Microsoft Word if you misspell ANZAC, the capitalised version will not be suggested, but only the version with the initial capital. In fact Microsoft Word will even autocorrect a misspelled capitalised variation of ANZAC, to be the word Anzac, with the initial capital letter.

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

Is the spelling nightime, nighttime, night time, or night-time?

A common issue with spelling is whether two words should be put together without a space (known as a compound word), include a space, or the words hyphenated. Sometimes words evolve over time starting as separated, then hyphenated and finally joined together.

A check of Google for Australian sites ending in .au, returns 1.76 million results for nighttime, 3.88 million results for night time (which includes night-time) and 101,000 for nightime.

Nightime should be considered a spelling error, but it is used for Codral Nightime Cold and Flu tablets, where misspelling a word is common in branding and marketing situations.

The compound word nighttime is a US spelling. In Australia the spelling is not listed in either the Macquarie dictionary or the Australian Oxford dictionary, so nighttime should be considered a spelling error in Australia.

The Macquarie dictionary lists night-time as a noun, with no reference to night time. The Australian Oxford dictionary also only lists night-time, again with no reference to night time.

I have to say I didn’t see that coming. The correct spelling for Australian usage is night-time with the hyphen.

A quick review of the first 100 sites for “night-time” shows only 30% of sites use the correct spelling, many using both night time and night-time in the one article which is considered an error. Given the number of people using the spelling nighttime, nightime and night time, it is conceivable that 80% or more of writers are using the incorrect spelling for Australia, according to the Macquarie and Australian Oxford dictionaries.

With Microsoft Word, if you enter nighttime Microsoft Word will mark nighttime as an error, but suggest both night time and night-time, which could easily lead writers to use the wrong spelling for Australia, depending on what they mean to write.

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

Microsoft Outlook does not correctly spellcheck flavor when in the subject field.

Recently I was sending an email using Microsoft Outlook and to my surprise, the incorrect spelling flavor was not picked up as a spelling error. In fact the correct spelling flavour was marked as a spelling error in the subject field.

If typing flavour in the body of the email message the spelling was correctly handled as the correct spelling for Australia and flavor was correctly marked as a spelling error.

It really is hard to believe after so many decades of Microsoft Outlook being available, there's still errors in the code. In this case the spelling language was set to Australian English. The body of the message is spellchecked correctly, but the subject field is checking the text entered against American English.

To get around this issue and check the spelling correctly, copy the subject text into the body of the email, check the text is spelt correctly, then cut and paste the text into the subject field. That way you know you're getting the text spellchecked using the selected language.

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

Is the spelling Afterall or After all?

Recently, whilst checking a Microsoft Word document, the word Afterall with the initial letter capitalised did not come up as a spelling error, whereas afterall without the initial capital, was shown as a spelling error. How could this be?

The compound word afterall is a common misspelling of after all. The Australian Oxford dictionary confirms the spelling is after all.

A check of Google for sites in Australia (sites ending in .au) returns 321,000 results for afterall and 19.6 million results for after all, which shows most people spell the word correctly. So why isn't Microsoft Word marking the word Afterall as a spelling error?

It may simply be the Microsoft Word dictionary is in error. Another possible reason is a check of the internet shows Afterall is used by a number of organisations as part of their name. As part of an organisation's name, Afterall can be capitalised.

In this situation, how the word Afterall is being used, is after all the only way to know if the word should be capitalised or not. If Afterall is not part of an organisation's name, it is a spelling error.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

The preferred Australian English spelling.

Is the spelling checkbook, check book, check-book, chequebook, cheque book or cheque-book?

It's been a long time since I've written a cheque. Remember ripping out those cheques. But how do you spell the thing you ripped the cheques out off?

The easy task is we can eliminate checkbook (and any variation) as checkbook is listed in the Macquarie Dictionary as the US spelling. The Australian Oxford dictionary lists cheque book and the hyphenated variation as in cheque-book journalism. The Macquarie Dictionary has the entry chequebook and chequebook journalism. Two dictionaries with two different spelling variations.

If we perform a search on the NAB, Westpac, Commbank and ANZ sites, our four main banks nearly always use cheque book.

A search of Google restricting sites those ending in .au for cheque book and chequebook gives  36,00 and 31,900 respectively. Using the plural cheque books and chequebooks gives 12,000 and 6,320 respectively. If we search for cheque book journalism and chequebook journalism the results returned are 508 and 74 respectively. Of the 508 results for cheque book journalism around 30% used the hyphen, as in cheque-book journalism. Finally, if we use chequebook diplomacy and cheque book diplomacy we get 70 results and 44 results respectively.

Certainly this is not an easy one. The banking industry appears to mostly use cheque book as two words. The results returned from Google for sites ending in .au also indicates cheque book is the preferred spelling. When used as an adjective with the word journalism, the most common usage was cheque book without the hyphen.

Based on these results, for Australian usage, the preferred spelling appears to be cheque book as two words and when used as an adjective, the spelling may not need to be hyphenated. Although this does make me wonder if it's because using hyphens is often a problem for people. Normally, going forward we'd probably expect to see chequebook become the preferred spelling, however since cheque books are being used less and less, there's a good chance cheque books may become a thing of the past.

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

Is the spelling free standing, free-standing, or freestanding?

Looking for kitchen appliances recently, the results returned In Google showed the use of free standing, freestanding, and free-standing, sometimes even in the one result. It is often said if there's multiple ways to spell a word, you should be consistent with the spelling you choose.

The Australian spelling dictionary aims to provide the single spelling preferred in Australia, but sometimes, as in this case, it can be quite difficult to identify the single preferred spelling. A search of Google for sites from Australia (sites ending in .au) returns 5.41 million results for free standing and 6.37 million for freestanding. Because of the way search engines work, searching for free-standing with the hyphen, usually doesn't return something we can have confidence in, as a hyphen is often treated as a word delimiter. Hyphens are also regularly used in the website URL  (address) and these results will be returned by Google as well.

The Macquarie dictionary has the entry freestanding, but not free-standing. The Oxford Australian dictionary has free-standing, but not freestanding. Microsoft Word is no help at all as it will suggest freestanding and free-standing with the same meaning, and both free and standing are legitimate words in their own right.

It appears this may be a situation where the spelling is evolving. Often when there's two words used as an adjective, the words will be hyphenated. However, as time goes on the hyphenated words drop the hyphen and the result is a single word. With freestanding exceeding free standing (and free-standing), this would indicate the preferred Australian spelling may now be freestanding, with the hyphenated version free-standing a secondary variation. The use of free standing as a two word adjective - when used in the sense of self-supporting, unconnected, independent – which is very common, would also not be the preferred spelling.

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

Is the spelling help desk or helpdesk?

A very common situation is whether or not two words should be separated by a space, or joined together as a compound word. The term help desk/helpdesk is one such situation.

A check on the internet of Australian sites (limiting sites to end in .au using Google) returns 12.6 million results for help desk and 379,000 for helpdesk. However, most people aren’t aware of how to limit results to just include sites ending in .au, so if they did the same test without restricting the results, they would get 66.8 million and 73 million respectively. The reverse of the usage in Australia. This is a perfect example of why it isn’t wise to just accept the information you receive from Google, without understanding more about the results you’re seeing.

Microsoft Word accepts both helpdesk and help desk equally, meaning writers using Microsoft Word are often unaware they’re using a secondary spelling variation.

If you check the Macquarie and the Australian Oxford dictionaries, both list help desk as the primary entry and helpdesk as an also entry.

The primary spelling in Australia is therefore help desk, with a space between the two words.

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

Is the spelling breakeven, break even, or break-even?

It's very common where a word can be used as a compound word, two separate words, or with the two words hyphenated. Sometimes all three can be correct based on your usage, but at other times one or more may be a secondary spelling, or may be incorrect usage.

If we check breakeven, break even and break-even using Google, and limiting sites to sites ending in .au, the number of results returned are: 67,400, 156,000 and 161,000 respectively. The Australian Oxford Dictionary only lists break even. The Macquarie Dictionary lists both break even and break-even. Neither dictionary lists breakeven which indicates breakeven as a compound word may not be correct. Those using Microsoft Word should take care as Word accepts breakeven as a valid spelling.

The Macquarie Dictionary describes break-even as a noun derived from the phrasal verb break even, thus break even is a phrasal verb.  E.g. Usage as a phrasal verb. The company aims to break even by year end. Usage as a noun. The company may never reach break-even. In addition break-even can be used as an adjective. The company needs to know their break-even point.

Whether break-even or break even is used depends on your usage. At least in Australia, breakeven as a compound word, should most likely be considered to be an error.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

Is the spelling veranda or verandah?

One of the well known uses of the word verandah is in the song Home Among the Gumtrees, written by Bob Brown and Wally Johnson in 1974 and later recorded by John Williamson. The spelling used was verandah. Today if a person used Microsoft’s Word to write the lyrics, they’d most likely use the spelling veranda, as verandah is not included in the Microsoft spelling dictionary.

According to both the Macquarie and Oxford dictionaries the primary spelling is verandah, with veranda listed as a secondary spelling. For Australian sites (those ending in .au), according to Google the usage of verandah to veranda is approximately 2:1. 

So next time when you’re sitting in an old rocking chair pondering, you’ll know the primary spelling in Australia is verandah ending in an h.

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

Is the spelling pre recession, prerecession or pre-recession?

If you check the Macquarie and Australian Oxford dictionaries you’ll not find an entry for the spelling pre recession, prerecession or pre-recession. What are you to do if the dictionaries don’t help you?

Often words evolve over time. To-morrow became tomorrow. First, in general, if the word is not in an Australian dictionary, that would indicate the usage has not evolved enough to become a single word. If the hyphenated version doesn’t appear in the dictionary that doesn’t rule it out, but you still don’t know. Don’t fall for the trap of using dictionaries for other countries online as versions of English for different countries may evolve differently over time.

Is the usage of the two words an adjective, or adverb and perhaps should be hyphenated?

Sometimes if in doubt, perhaps the best approach, may be to rewrite the sentence. 

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

Is the spelling driver’s licence, drivers’ licence, drivers licence, or driver licence?

Sometimes it’s almost impossible to work out what the correct place an apostrophe should be, or even if it should be used.

Before we answer the above question, let’s first look at visitors book. The visitors book doesn’t belong to a visitor, so there is no possessive apostrophe. In a similar way a licence is a document we acquire when we pass a driving test.

If you visit the VicRoads site you won’t find an apostrophe in drivers licence where it’s used, but more often than not you’ll find driver licence, or licence. However, if you scan the internet you’ll find driver’s licence, drivers licence, driver licence and driving licence. In SA the government site uses driver’s licence. In NSW the government site uses driver licence. In QLD, often licence is used by itself and less often, driver licence.

By not using an ’s’ on the end of driver, the VIC, NSW and QLD government sites avoid the issue with the apostrophe.

In general the spelling should be driver licence without the s and apostrophe, however, often we need to conform to the standards of others. Depending on the state you’re in, you’ll most likely need to check the state’s governing body to see the preferred use or not, of the apostrophe. Alternately, it may be possible rewrite your sentence so no apostrophe is required.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

The preferred Australian English spelling.

Is the spelling learnt or learned?

OK. This is one where I’ll stand corrected. Until writing this article I’d previously researched and found the spelling learnt was the preferred Australian English spelling, except for the usage of learned for a person with much knowledge pronounced “learn-ed”.  But today that changes. Our language changes over time and at times that means we need to change as well.

When it comes to the spelling of learnt or learned, in the usage such as “I learnt/learned to drive”, the preferred spelling in Australia is learned.

If you check The Australian Oxford Dictionary and the Macquarie Dictionary for the entry “learn”, you’ll find learned appears before learnt in both. The positioning of the word in the entry indicates the preferred usage in Australia.

To confirm the usage in Australia, a search of Google for sites ending in .au (Australian sites), for a phrase such as “l learned to drive” and “I learnt to drive”, returns over 90% of articles using learned compared to learnt.

After reading this article you’ll be able to claim you’re learned in the terms learnt and learned.

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