Online style guide
- Hague, The
it's always 'The Hague', never 'Hague' or 'the Hague'.
- halcyon
- hale
and hearty, hail a taxi
- hallelujah
- Halley's comet
- hallowed ground
not hollowed
- hallucinogen, hallucinogenic
- hanged, hung
people are hanged, pictures hung
- hanging participles
'Born in Hobart in 1909, his daughter Rory has now donated her father's memorabilia to the Tasmanian Museum...' That would make Rory 99—not unreasonable except this is the second paragraph of a story about Errol Flynn and his daughter Rory. Much better to repeat the name: Errol Flynn was born in Hobart in 1909, and his daughter Rory has now donated her father's...etc.
- hara-kiri
- harass, harassment
- hard line, hardline
The premier took a hard line on the proposed tax. What kind of line? Hard. The minister proposed a hardline policy. What kind of policy? Hardline.
- harebrained
- haybaling
not bailing
- head-to-head
- heading or headed?
'Is Australia heading (not headed) for a hung parliament?' Best to avoid 'headed' here because its use as anything other than the past tense of the verb 'to head' is hard to justify in Australian usage.
- heading to
please consider using other verbs such as going, travelling, flying. 'Heading to' is overused.
- headings
please use newspaper headline style, with the first word capitalised but the rest lower-cased. 'Lebanon update', not 'Lebanon Update'; 'Live concert from Port Fairy', not 'Live Concert from Port Fairy'.
- Hedland, Port
town in Pilbara Region of Western Australia
- heinous crime
- hello
not hullo or hallo
- Hepburn, Katharine
not Katherine
- heyday
one word
- hi-tech
- hidden line breaks
- hierarchy
- Hillary Clinton
- Hills hoist
- hip hop
no capitals, no hyphen
- hip pocket
hip-pocket nerve
- historic, historical
the fall of the Berlin Wall was a historic event, but most public libraries hold historical documents
- history repeating itself
'More than one million people died in that famine and now there are fears that history could be repeating.' Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey have made 'history repeating' stick in our brains, but in a serious discussion of world hunger we should write '...history could be repeating itself.'
- HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus which may lead to AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome)
- hoi polloi
the masses, the people (it doesn't mean high and mighty, which is hoity-toity
- hoist with [one's] own petard
- hoity-toity
snobbish, haughty
- hokey-cokey
the dance
- hokey-pokey
hocus pocus, or trickery, or brittle toffee in New Zealand
- hold fast
to your sanity
- holdfast
a clamping device
- holey
full of holes (holy, holiness is spiritual excellence)
- holier-than-thou
self-righteous
- Holy Grail
- home in on
- hone your skills
- horde, hordes
of people ... a hoard of treasure
- hors d'oeuvre
(singular and plural)
- hotdog
one word
- hotel
a hotel—and all other words beginning with H where the H is pronounced. So it's a historian, a historic occasion, but an honour, an heir.
- hullaballoo
- hummus
the pureƩ
- humour, humorous, humorist
If you're writing in America you use humor. In Australia it's still definitely humour. But just to be contrary, it's humorist and humorous everywhere.
- humus
the rotted vegetation
- hurly-burly
- hyphens
never after adverbs ending in -ly, as in 'fully financed', 'partly paid' (but part-paid does need one). And be careful where you put hyphens: anti-sexual assault classes might suggest a new kind of martial art. Anti sexual-assault classes has a clearer meaning.