ABC Radio National

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 cropped up on our site in a variety of versions during his anniversary year, but this is the right one.

em-dash — useful in pairs in place of brackets—like this—or to indicate a change of thought—like this. The em-dash is usually supplied by Word as an auto-correct replacement when you type two hyphens together, or you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+- (that's the minus sign if your keyboard has a numbers pad). If you haven't got a numbers pad use 'insert symbol'. en-dash – can be used in place of 'to' in a date series. 1995–2003

The survey data shows the result we expected. The original singular datum (like agendum) is not used in everyday writing.

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

not David Hick's or Hicks'

compulsory or required

Best not to write that a debate will be 'waged', unless you're being ironic, because a public debate is usually more civilised than a war. A topic will be debated, or a debate will be conducted.

not definately

Surprisingly, quite a few instances of Dehli are appearing on our site.

means death, not decline

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

someone who is dependent (adjective)

Charles Darwin's descendANTs were mentioned quite a lot in his anniversary 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...' Anyway the sentence is 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 widely used but 'Bad weather has caused a delay' is considered by some to be better usage.

coat, bag

Czech composer

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