OK, Donald, here's my one Australian business writing
story. It comes from my favorite reference book, Merriam
Webster's _Dictionary of English Usage_. and concerns the use
of the verb _finalize_.
 
But first--according to Roy H. Copperud, who did a survey of what
dictionaries and usage critics had to say about various controversial
word uses (_American Usage and Style: The Consensus_, 1980),
the dictionaries see _finalize_ as standard English but the
pop grammarians despise it as "gobbledegook or as an unnecessary
neologism for _complete_, _finish_,  _end_."
 
According to Webster's, it was used for 20 years in the U.S. before
it suddenly became unpopular when it showed up on Congressman
Maury Maverick's original gobbledgook list in 1942, after which critics
in the U.S. and England scorned it (the British deriding it as an
Americanism). Webster's tells us that the word has long been
uncontroversial SE in New Zealand and Australia, where it comes
from. Webster's got that point in 1923 when their agent in
Melborne "wrote to report losing the sale of a dictionary because
_finalize_ was not in it." Webster's concludes that the word
serves a purpose in formal business English. Even Copperud,
who is moderately conservative, feels that the word has been
"unjustly aspersed."
 
--Bill Murdick