A strange thing happened on the way to .... Our final proof of the previous edition of Ozwordswas perfect, but between that final proof and the printer the final five words from Bruce Moore’s article ‘Of Boondies, Belgium Sausages, and Bogans’ went walkabout. How it happened is a bafflement to us. We apologise to our readers, many of whom wrote to us good-naturedly about being left up in the air, so to speak. The missing five words were...generate their own distinctive terms.

Several readers wrote to us expressing their interest in the OXLEX Conference (‘Who’s Centric Now? The Present State of Post-Colonial Englishes’) to be held at the Australian National University from 27 to 29 October 1999. The Conference will be hosted by the Australian National Dictionary Centre in association with Oxford University Press and the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU. The theme of the Conference will be the role of regional Englishes in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, etc. A public lecture will be given by John Simpson, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.Details about the Conference are given in the flyer which accompanies this issue.

Frederick Ludowyk
Editor, Ozwords