Common Australian spellings
'e' words
Plurals
Common Australian spellings
UTAS printed and web publications use Australian spellings:
- ‘our’, not ‘or’, e.g. colour, favourite, neighbour, humour
- ‘program’, not ‘programme’
- ‘re’, not ‘er’, e.g. centre, millimetre
- ‘s’, not a ‘z’, e.g. advertise, advise, analyse, authorise, comprise, compromise, emphasise, enterprise, finalise, standardise, standardising, standardisation, supervise
Other common Australian spellings are:
- accommodation (2 c’s and 2 m’s)
- acknowledgement
- adviser (not advisor which is the US spelling)
- advisory panel
- ageing, not aging
- backup
- convenor (not convener)
- cyber (no hyphen when used with another word, eg: cybercrime)
- enrol, enrolling, enrolment
- enquire, enquiries is for referring to student or general enquiries
- focused, focusing
- home page
- inquire, inquiry is for formal investigations, eg: establishing a police inquiry
- internet (no capital)
- multimedia
- nationwide
- online
- offline
- per cent
- percentages
- postgraduate (not post graduate or post-graduate)
- reboot
- reformat
- spreadsheet
- startup disk
- startup screen
- statewide
- undergraduate
- videoconference, videoconferencing
- web (no capital)
- web page (two words)
- website
- world wide web
- world-class
- worldwide, not world-wide
Also, refer to the sections on 'e' words and ‘Hyphens’.
'e' words
In general use a lower case e with the next letter in upper case when referring to the set of words prefixed with an 'e' (for electronic):
- eBook
- eBusiness
- eEducation
- eEducation program
- eLearning
- ePortfolio
- eResearch
- eResearch developments
- eTeaching
- eZine
Note: email (no hyphen, all lower case).
Plurals
- 'head of school' is 'heads of school', e.g. heads of school/faculty/division, not head of schools/faculties/divisions
- HoS is singular or plural, depending on context
- bachelors degree or masters degree, not bachelor's degree or bachelors' degree
- the technically correct Englished plural of platypus is platypods (cf octopods), but commonsense plural is platypus. Other examples are: fish, deer, and sheep.
The English form of words borrowed from French, Latin etc is now generally preferred (the exception tends to be for scientific words):
- curriculums
- memorandums
- forums
- bureaus
- plateaus.
