Abstract: you may want to add here your main conclusion: that in dwarf/irregulars dust appears mainly clumpy, with very little diffuse component, and has a high 70/160 ratio (warmer dust), while in spirals the dust has a large diffuse component and an overall lower dust temperature. Finally, for those early type galaxies that have a single, nuclear IR clump the dust temperature is still high, but virtually no diffuse IR component is observed. --Done 1. Introduction, second paragraph: the first paper to show that the UV slope is in excellent correlation with dust extinction was Calzetti, Kinney & Storchi-Bergmann 1994. The paper I did with Gerhardt (Meurer et al. 1999) built on that original series of papers, and expanded then to include the FIR/UV versus beta correlation. --Thanks; reference added 2. last sentence of 2nd para of section 4.2. Doesn't this simply reiterate previous results (Buat et al. 2002, Xu et al. 2004, etc.) that there is neverthless a general trend of UV slope with FIR/UV? --Hmmm...I read Buat et al. and their main point is that variations in F_UV/F_Ha disappear once you correct for extinction (not that variations in UV/IR are driven by variations in UV). I couldn't find an article by Xu et al. in 2004. 3. Third para of section 4.2: that the galaxies with lowest FIR/UV are the lowest metallicity ones, I think was already known (I have to find the references, but it comes from IRAS times). 4. Same para as point 3: another reference that shows that 24 micron closely follow SFR is Calzetti et al. 2005. --Added 5. Section 4.3: is there a way (without adding another table) to list which galaxies are part of the 3/4 sample used for the principal component analysis? Maybe an asterisk on Table 1 will suffice. --Done 6. Section 4.3, again: is there an intuitive, simple explanation of the nature of the 2 eigenvalues? Are there galaxies in the SINGS sample that are almost exclusively described by e_1? If so, which ones? These could help understanding what the eigevalue stands for. Ditto for e_2. --David raised a similar point (though model-based). I am looking into this issue. 7. Section 5.2, first para. I am not sure I am appreciating the difference between `paucity in dust emission' and `relative excess of UV emission'. The first suggestion is to replace `UV emission' with `observed UV emission'. For non-pathological galaxy morphologies, I would expect that a decrease in FIR emission corresponds to an increase in UV emission, if nothing else because you get less UV light reprocessed by dust in the FIR. So I would conclude that paucity in dust emission and excess in UV emission are close to be the same thing. --I agree. I wasn't trying to distinguish between the two scenarios, but I can see that the way it is written can be misleading. I have rewritten this portion of the text. 8. second para of section 5.2: I am not sure that I agree with the implication of this paragraph, that because the irregular galaxies have warmer dust, they also have high FIR/UV ratios. Observationally, irregulars tend to have *low* FIR/UV ratios (as also shown in one of your figures). The dust temperature (and the harder radiation field) is not linked, I believe, to the FIR/UV ratio of irregulars. In general, irregular galaxies are quite blue and have low FIR/UV ratios. However, their `blueness' is not related to the `harder radiation field', but only to the lower dust extinction they experience; from the stellar continuum above 912 Angstrom you would never be able to determine the metallicity of a stellar population, as the harder radiation field does not give much show of itself at non ionizing wavelengths (I have just verified this with Claus). --This is a truly useful comment; I really appreciate it. Somehow I got sidetracked into explaining higher 70/160 ratios for irregulars, and I ended up using that argument to suggest elevated IR/UV ratios (when it's not even true!). This paragraph and the beginning of the next paragraph have been revamped. 9. section 5.3, first para. I would expand the discussion on the proximity to `hot' sources to include AGNs in addition to active star forming regions. Even if you conclude later that for the SINGS galaxies, AGNs do not appear a major dust heating contributor, still you may want to open the section with general statements. --Done 10. section 5.3, last para. Your analysis implies that in dwarf, irregular galaxies, the little dust present is clumped around star forming regions. This is a cool result, and you may want to spend a few more words on it. In particular, the warmer colors get an intuitive explanation, which I would try to emphasize even more. Still, this should have virtually no impact on how much dust there is (if there were more, more would be heated, since we are not in the optically thick regime for these galaxies). 11. section 5.4, first line. I would quote also Calzetti 1997, as the first case in which the attenuation curve of starbursts has been derived, and it has been shown that UV data provide all necessary information to derive an extinction correction. --Done 12. Section 6, first para. I am not sure how the two eigenvalues are connected to the birthrate or other specific star formation rate parameter. I tried to get is also from section 4.3, but here the birthrate parameter or SFR is never mentioned. --Good point. I have added a new section on the specific star formation rate, and linked the text in Section 6 to this analysis. 13. Last sentence of first para of section 6: in relation to the early type galaxies that increase the dispersion in the FIR/UV versus UV spectral slope plot; are these early type galaxies `star forming' ones as well? Previous analysis, e.g., Buat et al., Xu et al., and all the others, have explicitly removed non-star-foming sources. --They represent a mix of star-forming and quiescent early-type systems.