WWII Normandy landing 6 June 1944 (day of reckoning)

or dangling modifiers, become a problem if a reader has to pause to work out how a sentence should be understood. For example, 'Driving up to the house, her dog always barks loudly.' That split-second hesitation while you work out what's going on can be avoided by writing 'Her dog always barks loudly when she drives up to the house.' We still don't know if the dog's in the car or in the house, but at least it's not driving.

wrote On the Origin of Species. It's cropping up on our site in a variety of versions in his anniversary year, but this is the right one.

em-dash — HTML code: —
useful in pairs in place of brackets—like this—or to indicate a change of thought—like this. The em-dash can be achieved online only by using the html code above. The next best thing is to type a double hyphen -- like this -- with one letter space either side.

en-dash – HTML code –
can be used in place of 'to' in date series. 1995–2003

1950s, '50s and '60s, and 12 November 2004 (day, month, year but with no punctuation)

not David Hick's or Hicks'

compulsory or required

not definately

use this HTML code for the degree symbol (°)
°

means death, not decline

with an 's', but Australian Defence Department with a 'c'

someone who is dependent (adjective)

Charles Darwin's descendANTs are being mentioned quite a lot this year

cross the desert, receive your just deserts, but eat dessert

please watch out for the overuse of 'devastating'. Floods and bushfires need not always be described as devastating, even though we all know they are. Overuse devalues an adjective.

diagnose a condition, not a person. Her schizophrenia was diagnosed, not she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

David Hicks's sentence, Robert Burns's poems

(dye, dyed, dyeing when you change the colour)

from, not to or than

a choice between two (bad) alternatives, so shouldn't really be used to describe a general problem, as in 'When parents go back to work they face the dilemma of working out who's going to look after the baby...' This is much too wordy, and is better as 'When parents go back to work they need to decide who's going to look after the baby,'

small boat

dirty

for everything except computer disks

'Discomfit' is stronger, in the sense of disconcerting, thwarting or foiling (Macquarie) than 'discomfort', which when used as a verb means to make uneasy or less comfortable.

separate, distinct (discreet is circumspect, unobtrusive)

describes impartiality, or being unbiased, having no vested interest. It does not describe a lack of interest (uninterested) although the distinction is increasingly blurred in everyday usage.

not disassociate

no such word as devine

male and female

no hyphen

not Dr Who

either 'the government's $42 billion stimulus plan' (preferred) or 'the government's forty-two billion dollar stimulus plan' (a bit wordy); but watch out for this kind of indecisive double-up: 'the government's $42 billion dollar stimulus plan...'

To distinguish between currencies, country codes should precede the dollar sign, like this: US$20,000, A$30,000, NZ$35,000, S$10,000 for American, Australian, New Zealand and Singapore dollars respectively.

dotcom companies

no punctuation

but draft a document

I'm going for my drivers licence (no apostrophe) but that driver's licence has expired. Other places where apostrophes have disappeared: girls school, travellers cheques, widows pension.

a clothes dryer will make clothes drier

dual is double, duel is the fight between two people

means caused by, not 'because of'. So 'The delay is due to [caused by] bad weather' is correct. 'Due to [caused by] bad weather there is a delay' is incorrect. The rule-of-thumb is never begin a sentence with 'due to'.

coat, bag

Czech composer

hair or fabric dye, but die, dying, died for demise