Friday, May 11, 2007

Open Office

I wrote yesterday about how I couldn't get the spell checker to work after installing Open Office on my new computer. Obviously, with it being open source software it doesn't come with everything pre-installed so I had to download the relevant files and install them myself. This took virtually no time and now there is no chance of me posting articles with misspellings in them. Not that I would ever spell words like colour or organise as color or organize but typos can happen (fairly regularly with me!).


So special thanks to the very kind people who pointed me to the Australian English (Kelvin version) dictionary files.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seeing as you guys spell it "colour" rather than "color", what is the difference in Australian English vs British English?

I've tried to tie Wendy down on one single example but haven't managed it yet!

As an aside, I dread to think just how many spelling mistakes there are throughout my blog 'cos I never spellcheck it.

Andrea said...

As far as I know, there is no difference in spelling between Australian and British English.

The difference is mainly in the words and concepts such as in informal language with additions such as 'arvo' or 'barbie' or words which originate from Australian indigenous languages which don't exist in Britain.

Australian dictionaries also include Australian places and rivers, for example.

The other difference is in the grammar. Obviously, Australian English is very close to British English but there are a few differences. For example, depending on where you come from, it is correct to say different than, different to or different from. However, I can't remember which is Australian, British or American hehe.

While I don't spell check my personal blog (this one) I do with my other blogs as I'm supposed to be a professional writer.