Department of Linguistics
A NATIONAL BULLETIN ON ISSUES IN
AUSTRALIAN STYLE AND ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA
| Volume 17 No 1 | October 2010 |
EDITORIAL: Adam SmithFirst of all apologies for the delay in publishing this edition of Australian Style. Technical and timing issues have conspired to make this the only edition of 2010, but we hope to produce two editions, as normal, next year. In this issue we have Susan Butler, editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, writing about what is Standard Australian English. Neil James of the Plain English Foundation tackles the burgeoning twittersphere, in a topic that was the subject of a forum at this year’s Sydney Writer’s Festival. Regular features include the word column, featuring two words from diverse registers that have cropped up in the political sphere of late, SCOSE notes by Irene Poinkin, a review of the lighthearted book on commonly confused words How much can a koala bear?, cartoons by Judy Dunn, and David Astle finds time in between his tv appearances (see Letters and Numbers, weeknights on SBS) to provide us with another Rubicon. You may notice that the Feedback questionnaire, on pronunciation, is now in a new format – one which hopefully will be more user-friendly to fill in online. Readers also have the option to fill out the questionnaire in hardcopy from the printable pdf of the newsletter. The Feedback report compares some usage issues, numerical and otherwise, from the most recent Feedback with some from earlier surveys. A complete record of these is now available in the Archive section, which has now been updated to include pdfs of Australian Style going back to the very first edition in 1993. Many of our readers are editors who may interested in the professional qualifications offered by Macquarie University – see advertisement on the homepage. To all of you, editors or not, we hope that you continued to enjoy Australian Style, and we welcome your feedback and contributions on all matters concerned with English in Australia. Contact: adam.smith@mq.edu.au |