Name of the CRC | You say savannah, we say savanna |

Name of the CRC

The full name of our CRC is the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Savannas Management. Our short name is the Tropical Savannas CRC or the Tropical Savannas Management  CRC. Either is acceptable, though the latter is mainly used in internal communication to to distinguish between the former and present CRCs.

The contracted form is TS–CRC. It is hyphenated using an en rule, which, as you can see, is slightly longer than a hyphen. The form TSM–CRC can be used in internal communication to distinguish between the former and present CRCs.

We continued using the form TS–CRC and Tropical Savannas CRC with the second-round CRC to help maintain a public presence for the CRC.

You say savannah, we say savanna

Both these spellings for savanna are correct. However, savannah is the less common spelling in all modern dictionaries, though it was the preferred spelling in the Oxford Dictionary (Australian English Style Guide, p. 675-676). Even in American English it is the secondary form, despite it being the name of the famous town in Georgia.

The spelling savanna stays closer to the original word from Caribbean Spanish, zavana. In modern Spanish it is sabana.

We define savanna as the landscapes of dense grass and scattered trees; the Macquarie Dictionary defines it as a flat grassland of tropical or subtropical regions. If you have definitions you prefer, just let us know.

Mixing the two the spellings . Here in Australia, the Ecotourism organisation Savannah Guides has chosen the less common form of the spelling. It is all right to mix the spelling of the two when one is a formal organisation. So, we can write: ‘The Savannah Guides comprise tourism businesses throughout Australia’s savanna regions.’