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Is it defense or defence? - Australian spelling
At first glance this is appears to be an easy one. The spelling in Australia is
defence. Both the Macquarie and Oxford dictionaries have defence as the
Australian spelling, with defense being the American spelling. No
ambiguity there.
However, a check using Google for sites ending in .au, shows the number of pages
returned for defence as 5.12 million and defense as 1.33 million.
With so much usage of the American spelling in Australian sites, we see some
usage is correct, (referring to American defence organisations), there is quite
a lot is laziness, (American news articles not edited for Australian
consumption), some incorrect usage, then some sites using the two
different spelling variations in the same article.
Australian defence companies with Australian sites are faced with the same dilemma as
Australian authors when marketing to a global audience. Do they use Australian
English, or do they use American English? Perhaps different editions for
different markets may be a better approach.
For Australians creating content for Australian usage, the spelling is defence.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.
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