Microsoft's perception of Australian English
Hi, I don't use Microsoft Word much, but naturally I support users who do. I have the computers set up with the default language as "English (AUS)" because I presumed that was the right thing to do. However, I recently used Word and found that it misspells "organisation" as "organization". I was able to overcome this problem by setting the language to "English (UK)". I'm flabbergasted that it could be wrong like this. It seems to be a problem in both Word v.X and Word 2004. I guess my users are just ignoring these errors. However, it makes me wonder what everyone else does. Do you leave it as "AUS" and just ignore the errors, or do you set it to "UK"? I'm not sure of the differences between Word's AUS and UK spellings, except that they seem to be basically back-to-front in this case.
Re: Microsoft's perception of Australian English
James Devenish wrote: Hi, I don't use Microsoft Word much, but naturally I support users who do. I have the computers set up with the default language as "English (AUS)" because I presumed that was the right thing to do. However, I recently used Word and found that it misspells "organisation" as "organization". I was able to overcome this problem by setting the language to "English (UK)". I'm flabbergasted that it could be wrong like this. It seems to be a problem in both Word v.X and Word 2004. I guess my users are just ignoring these errors. However, it makes me wonder what everyone else does. Do you leave it as "AUS" and just ignore the errors, or do you set it to "UK"? I'm not sure of the differences between Word's AUS and UK spellings, except that they seem to be basically back-to-front in this case. Try adding the 'mispelt' word to a custom dictionary. While swearWord thinks there is an error in your document press F7 to bring up Spelln n Grimace. Click Options>Dictionaries>New and save it in a folder where it will get backed up along with the user's other data. You could also pop a pref file into new installs with the change already made. Cheers Paul
Re: Microsoft's perception of Australian English
Oops, I forgot to add that once you have your own '.dic' file, all peasky words need to be added to it. (locate the file then drop it on word, add the word to it and save it as '.dic' format again) Cheers Paul
Re: Microsoft's perception of Australian English
On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 18:51 +0800, James Devenish wrote: > Hi, > > I don't use Microsoft Word much, but naturally I support users who do. I > have the computers set up with the default language as "English (AUS)" > because I presumed that was the right thing to do. However, I recently > used Word and found that it misspells "organisation" as "organization". > I was able to overcome this problem by setting the language to "English > (UK)". I'm flabbergasted that it could be wrong like this. It seems to > be a problem in both Word v.X and Word 2004. I guess my users are just > ignoring these errors. However, it makes me wonder what everyone else > does. Do you leave it as "AUS" and just ignore the errors, or do you set > it to "UK"? I'm not sure of the differences between Word's AUS and UK > spellings, except that they seem to be basically back-to-front in this > case. The Australian dictionary compiled for OpenOffice.org suffers from the same problem. I think the aspell and ispell dictionaries do too. It is perhaps most strongly evidenced by the acceptance of both color and colour in writing. I've ended up having to replace the en_AU dictionaries on the journalists' systems here with the en_GB ones. I then provided them with a short custom dictionary compiled by our subeditors, and that's taken care of the issue. Like you, I think it's a sad state of affairs. We've never had a nutcase re-write our spelling ;-) and I sincerely hope it's not permitted to happen by proxy. -- Craig Ringer
Re: Microsoft's perception of Australian English
Hi,
Thanks to those who have pointed out that "organisation" is the only
word affected by this problem. Similar words, including its own
variants ("organised", "organiser"), are accepted by Word as Australian
spellings. The Commonwealth Style Guide lists "organisation" as the
preferred spelling for official publications and names (e.g. I'm pretty
sure CSIRO, ANSTO, DSTO, ASIO and DIO are all spelt with "Organisation"
in the legislation). Newspapers (including Craig's) seem to use
"organisation" too. Since "organisation" is also the expected spelling
in the higher-education and academic settings, one must use a "custom
dictionary" to overcome the problem.
Apparently, "organization" is predominant in some commercial settings
and in recent documents from government departments. I wonder if this is
*because of* the Word spell checker?! All other electronic dictionaries
I could find (including Apple's and aspell) prefer "organisation".
Re: Microsoft's perception of Australian English
On 16/03/2005, at 4:40 PM, James Devenish wrote:
Hi,
Thanks to those who have pointed out that "organisation" is the only
word affected by this problem. Similar words, including its own
variants ("organised", "organiser"), are accepted by Word as Australian
spellings. The Commonwealth Style Guide lists "organisation" as the
preferred spelling for official publications and names (e.g. I'm pretty
sure CSIRO, ANSTO, DSTO, ASIO and DIO are all spelt with "Organisation"
in the legislation). Newspapers (including Craig's) seem to use
"organisation" too. Since "organisation" is also the expected spelling
in the higher-education and academic settings, one must use a "custom
dictionary" to overcome the problem.
Apparently, "organization" is predominant in some commercial settings
and in recent documents from government departments. I wonder if this
is
*because of* the Word spell checker?! All other electronic dictionaries
I could find (including Apple's and aspell) prefer "organisation".
Never mind the electronic versions, they possibly emanate from the usa
originally anyway ./
My " Shorter Oxford English Dictionary " all 100 mm thickness of it
spells
organization this way.
Admittedly printed in Great Britain with corrections to 1969 !
Cheers
Bob
