Microsoft Office tells me it has an Australian dictionary. It doesn’t. It has an American dictionary that it calls Australian English. When you do a spellcheck it highlights -our and -ise words as errors and offers -or and -ize as suggested corrections. You are better off using the British English dictionary.
A solution is on the way; but not here yet.
The Macquarie dictionary (which has been out of CD for some time) now comes in a compact form for hard disk (5mb) and integrates with existing word processors, especially MS Word. It creates a button on the toolbar which accesses the meaning of the word the cursor is on.
That is faster than loading a CD, and hugely faster than looking up a word in the paper version, especially in a newspaper office where every dictionary has been hidden away by the night sub-editors.
Given at least half one’s use of a dictionary is while writing (and the other half while reading) the computer is going to be kicked up anyway. This is usually one of the major deterrents for people using electronic reference works, even if most of the waiting while the computer boots is amply compensated by the power of an electronic reference search.
The main advantage of an electronic dictionary is reverse searching.
If you are looking for the word that means instrument that measures wind, you can search the definition parts of the dictionary for “”wind” and “”instrument”. Sure, you will get “”clarinet” but you will also get “”anemograph”, which Microsoft’s spell-checker, incidentally, throws up as a spelling error.
Electronic searching is also a powerful research tool. You can also search for all words containing “”- graph -”. You get anemograph, autograph, bibliography, choreography, chronograph, and so on.
You can do wildcard searching, which is good for crossword freaks or dyslexics who confuse -ence and -ance words, for example. A crossword solver searching for ?e?s?on, for example, would get cession, pension, session, tension and version.
Of course, you pay a bit extra for the electronic version at $69.95 compared to the paper version at $35.
There are quite a few electronic dictionaries on the market. Most come with encyclopedias on CD. Indeed, Softkey’s Australian Infopedia has the Macquarie on it. The Britannica has a version of Websters. The Oxford English Dictionary (full version) is also on CD. It is a gem, but as expensive as one. None of these, however, are integrated with standard word-processors or compressed on to the hard disk.
Even so the Macquarie still has some way to go on the integration. Eurofield Information System, which puts out the Macquarie under the trade name MegaLex, says they are working on that. They hope a later version will replace existing spell-checker dictionaries. With any luck that will mean chopping out the existing ones to save disk space. It will also help the ever-encroaching Americanisation (with an s!) of Australian English.