Julia Barrett kindly clarified the matter of the order of credentials, as follows:

" I think the reason credentials are ordered the way they are is because RN 
is an academic degree and IBCLC is a certification. Generally, academic 
degrees come first and are sequenced from lowest to highest; degrees are 
followed by honors and certifications. The sequence is not neccessarily 
chronological unless it involves equivalent items. "

Just to add to that useful guide (thanks Julia), there is a protocol for listing Australian Honours, when listing them with other postnominals.  The protocol is that the Australian Honour comes first.  I have an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) adn it has to be listed first.  So I usually list postnominals as follows: Virginia Thorley, OAM, MA, IBCLC.  I seldom use the full list of educational bits of paper, but on the occasions when I do, I list them as: OAM, ThA, BA, DipEd, GradCert TESOL, MA, IBCLC.  Currently I'm in the last few months of writing my PhD thesis, and so this will change in the future.  The DipEd and GS TESOL were postgraduate and I place them after the BA, and they also happen to have been acquired after it.

I never had a clear guide about the order, though, till Julia provided it on Lactnet. I'm just catching up wiht Lactnet posts after going nomail.

Virginia (now nomail)
in sunny Brisbane
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