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Is the spelling checkbook, check book, check-book, chequebook, cheque book or cheque-book? - Australian spelling
It's been a long time since I've written a cheque.
Remember ripping out those cheques. But how do you spell the thing you ripped the cheques out off?
The easy task is we can eliminate checkbook (and any variation), as checkbook is listed in the
Macquarie Dictionary as the US spelling. The Australian Oxford dictionary lists
cheque book and the hyphenated variation, as in cheque-book journalism.
The Macquarie Dictionary has the entry chequebook and chequebook journalism.
Two dictionaries with two different spelling variations.
If we perform a search on the NAB, Westpac, Commbank and ANZ sites,
our four main banks nearly always use cheque book.
A search of Google restricting sites those ending in .au for cheque book and chequebook
gives 36,00 and 31,900 respectively.
Using the plural cheque books and chequebooks gives 12,000 and 6,320 respectively.
If we search for cheque book journalism and chequebook journalism the results returned
are 508 and 74 respectively.
Of the 508 results for cheque book journalism around 30% used the hyphen, as in cheque-book journalism.
Finally, if we use chequebook diplomacy and cheque book diplomacy we get 70 results and 44 results respectively.
Certainly this is not an easy one. The banking industry appears to mostly use cheque book as two words.
The results returned from Google for sites ending in .au also indicates cheque book is the preferred spelling.
When used as an adjective with the word journalism, the most common usage was cheque book without the hyphen.
Based on these results, for Australian usage, the preferred spelling appears to be cheque book as two words
and when used as an adjective, the spelling may not need to be hyphenated.
Although this does make me wonder if it's because using hyphens is often a problem for people.
Normally, going forward we'd probably expect to see chequebook become the preferred spelling,
however since cheque books are being used less and less, there's a good chance cheque books
may become a thing of the past.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.
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