  Optical nebular emission lines are commonly used to estimate the star
formation rate of galaxies and the black hole accretion rate of their central
active nucleus. The accuracy of the conversion from line strengths to physical
properties depends upon the accuracy to which the lines can be corrected for
dust attenuation. For studies of single galaxies with normal amounts of dust,
most dust corrections result in the same derived properties within the errors.
However, for statistical studies of populations of galaxies, or for studies of
galaxies with higher dust contents such as might be found in some classes of
"transition" galaxies, significant uncertainty arises from the dust attenuation
correction. We compare the strength of the predominantly unobscured mid-IR
[NeII]15.5um + [NeIII]12.8um emission lines to the optical H alpha emission
lines in four samples of galaxies: (i) ordinary star forming galaxies, (ii)
optically selected dusty galaxies, (iii) ULIRGs, (iv) Seyfert 2 galaxies. We
show that a single dust attenuation curve applied to all samples can correct H
alpha emission for dust attenuation to a factor better than 2. Similarly, we
compare mid-IR [OIV] and optical [OIII] luminosities to find that [OIII] can be
corrected to a factor better than 3. This shows that the total dust attenuation
suffered by the AGN narrow line region is not significantly different to that
suffered by the starforming HII regions in the galaxy. We provide explicit dust
attenuation corrections, together with errors, for [OII], [OIII] and H alpha.
The best-fit average attenuation curve is slightly greyer than the Milky-Way
extinction law, indicating either that external galaxies have slightly
different typical dust properties to the Milky Way, or that there is a
significant contribution from scattering. Finally, we uncover an intriguing
correlation between Silicate absorption and Balmer decrement.
