Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

==Spelling convention==

* We use either American, British, or Australian spelling depending on the requirement of the publisher. In the case of a thesis, because this is Australia, we use Australian spelling. Also because we are electrical & electronic engineers we stick to the spellings "analog" (instead of "analogue") and "program" (instead of "programme"), even if your spell checker might sometimes tell you not to,  simply because of the widespread use of these spellings in our field.

* In the case where two alternative spellings are allowed, eg. biassing or biasing, always chose the shortest one.

* There are cases where language is evolving and it is uncertain which spelling is out of date and which is acceptable as a modern replacement.  For example, back in the 1990s it was unclear whether to write "infra-red" or "infrared."  "Infra-red" was the old way to write it, but many people were starting to write "infrared." In order to decide, put both versions one-by-one into Google and see which one wins in terms of greatest number of hits. In this example, the spelling "infrared" has the most Google hits and is now clearly the dominant spelling.