ABC Radio National

Western Australia

Walmart.com

trademark, so capitalise

no need to include 'http://www' unless you want it to be an active link.

thin end of the wedge, not edge

trademark, so capitalise

he's well known for his wit, better known for his temper but best known for his flower arranging. We sometimes write 'most well known', which is not the best usage.

one word, no hyphen

but West Bank, West End

not West Australia for the name of the state. But it's the West Australian Ballet and The West Australian (newspaper)

wheelchair user, not 'wheelchair bound', nor 'confined to a wheelchair'

one word, and one L

while is preferred in everyday writing

never Whitehouse when you mean the one in Washington, DC

but he's a wiz at math

the contraction of 'who is'

belonging to (the boy who's annoying me is the same boy whose sister I like)

trademark, so keep hyphen and caps

It's important to get that upper case L in WikiLeaks, just as it is the upper case P in iPhone. They're proprietary names (registered as trademarks by their owners) and should be represented exactly.

'120 kilometre winds' may be understandable shorthand in conversation, but we should write '120 kph winds' for accuracy online.

'...a book which opens a window on one of the greatest periods of English history' (Shorter Oxford Dictionary)

a wiz at Scrabble ... but whiz-kid ... gee whiz

'And what's it like to discover love letters from Marie Antoinette, written just before the French Revolution in an old trunk in a corner of your villa?' Why was she writing love letters in your old trunk? Better to rearrange the word order and write: ...what's it like to discover, in an old trunk in a corner of your villa, love letters from Marie Antoinette written just before the French Revolution...

'There is an increasing number of overseas players buying into Australian agriculture.' This is too wordy and might be better like this: More and more overseas players are buying in to Australian agriculture.

less is more in phrases like 'we look at the way in which we engage with...', which can be rewritten as 'we look at the way we engage with...' or even 'we look at how we engage with...'

Remember the scale of badness: bad, worse (comparative), worst (superlative). The headline 'Pakistan's children worse hit by floods' is wrong. Here we need the superlative: Pakistan's children worst hit by floods.

We sometimes use 'wrack' when we mean 'rack'. Wrack is seaweed (but you can be racked with pain, go to rack and ruin, rack your brains, or find something nerve-racking)

but rap someone over the knuckles

but reek of corruption and reap a reward

Never a writer's festival, because that would be a festival for only one writer. Sydney still (as at 2012) has an apostrophe: Sydney Writers' Festival; Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne have dropped it: Perth Writers Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, and Adelaide has the Adelaide Festival Writers' Week. If in doubt, check each festival's official website.