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