Hi Manisha - The Macquarie Dictionary (http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/) is the best known Australian dictionary. The indispensible guide to matters of style is the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, put out by the Australian Government Information Management Office. The Sixth Edition was published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Australia Ltd: ISBN 0 7016 3648 3 (paperback) ISBN 0 7016 3647 5 (hardback) The Fifth Edition is available online (in inconvenient but free PDF format) at: http://www.agimo.gov.au/information/publishing/style_manual. These are the references I use when writing for a purely Australian audience. A very rough guide is that Australian English lies somewhere between UK English and American English, but closer to UK English. I'd say older words are more likely to follow British spelling (colour, defence) while many newer words follow Uncle Sam (truck not lorry). Beware of so-called Australian English spelling checkers. These often contain both UK and US spellings, so you can't assume that you've used a word correctly just because Microsoft Word doesn't complain. --- Stuart Burnfield ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************