American and British English differences: Encyclopedia II - American and British English differences - Writing

American and British English differences - Writing

American and British English differences - Spelling

Some words shared by all English speakers are spelled one way by Americans (and at times Canadians and Australians) but are spelt differently in some (or, at times, most) other English speaking countries.

• Traditionally, many English verbs have been spelled with both -ize and -ise. The -ise is often used over -ize (e.g. organise, legalise) in British English, but -ize is always used in American English (advertise being a rare exception). The American usage is the result of several reforms spearheaded by Noah Webster in the 19th century, while the British usage (where -ize was traditionally dominant) comes from 19th-century French influence. Perhaps because of this, -ize is preferred by Oxford University Press, is listed first in most British Dictionaries, and is preferred by many careful users of English in England; see Oxford's rationale on the matter for more information. The same is true of nouns and adjectives derived from such verbs: organisation vs. organization, etc. One notable exception is the verb to analyse, which although spelled to analyze in American English was never spelled that way in British English. Furthermore, not all such words are spelled with -ize even in American English: for example, incise, circumcise.

American and British English differences - Punctuation

• Full stops/Periods in abbreviations: Americans tend to write "Mr.", "Mrs.", "St.", "Dr." etc., while British will usually, but not always, write "Mr", "Mrs", "St", "Dr" (or even "D'r"), etc., following the rule that a full stop is used only when the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the complete word. However, many British writers would tend to write other abbreviations without a full stop, such as "Prof", "etc", "eg", and so on (so recommended by some Oxford dictionaries). The rationale behind this usage is that it is typographically more elegant, and that the omitted full stops/periods are essentially superfluous, as the reader recognizes the abbreviation without them. It also removes ambiguity by reserving the period for ending sentences. However, the "American" usage of periods after most abbreviations is also widely used in Britain. Note that in either case it is incorrect to put a period after units such as kg for kilogram or Hz for hertz, as these are considered unit symbols, not abbreviations; however, the unit for "inch" is properly "in.", as it would be ambiguous without the period.
• It is sometimes believed that British English does not hyphenate multiple-word adjectives, such as "a first class ticket". This usage is rare, and often considered incorrect. The most common form is as in American English, such as "a first-class ticket".
• Quoting: Americans start with double quotation marks (") and use single quotation marks (') for quotations within quotations. In general this is also true of British English but can be the opposite when used in book publishing, for example. In journals and newspapers, quotation mark double/single use depends on the individual publication's house style.
• Contents of quotations: Americans are taught to put commas and periods inside quotation marks, whereas British people will put the punctuation inside if it belongs to the quote and outside otherwise. This means that direct speech retains punctuation inside inverted commas in British English also, with a full stop changing into a comma if followed by explanatory text.
  • Carefree means "free from care or anxiety." (American style)
  • Carefree means "free from care or anxiety". (British style)
  • "Hello world," I said. (both styles)

• Letter-writing: American students in some areas have been taught to write a colon after the greeting in business letters ("Dear Sir:") while British people usually write a comma ("Dear Sir,") or make use of the so-called open punctuation ("Dear Sir"). However, this practice is not consistent throughout the United States, and it would be regarded as a highly formal usage by most Americans.

American and British English differences - Titles and headlines

Use of capitalisation varies.

In American English, a capital letter is typically used after an exclamation point, as in: "Good grief, Jim! Leave the man alone." In British English the expression would usually be rendered as 'Good grief, James! leave the man alone.'

Sometimes, the words in titles of publications, newspaper headlines, as well as chapter and section headings are capitalised in the same manner as in normal sentences (sentence case). That is, only the first word is capitalised, along with proper nouns, acronyms, etc.

However, publishers sometimes require additional words in titles and headlines to be capitalised, for added emphasis, as it is often perceived as appearing more professional. In American English, this is common in titles, but less so in newspaper headlines. The exact rules differ between publishers and are often ambiguous; a typical approach is to capitalise all words other than short articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. This should probably be regarded as a common stylistic difference, rather than a linguistic difference, as neither form would be considered incorrect or unusual in either Britain or the U.S. Many British newspapers use fully capitalised headlines for impact, as opposed to readability (examples include The Sun, The Daily Sport, News of the World).

American and British English differences - Dates

Date formats are usually written differently in the short (numerical) form. Christmas Day 2000, for example, is 25/12/00 in Britain and 12/25/00 in the U.S., although occasionally other formats are encountered, such as the ISO 8601 2000-12-25, popular among programmers and others seeking to avoid ambiguity. The difference in short-form date order can lead to misunderstanding. For example, 06/04/05 could mean either 4 June 2005 (U.S.) or 6 April 2005 (Britain).

When writing long-form dates, the format "December 25, 2000" is generally encountered in the U.S., and widely encountered in the UK. However, the British are more likely than Americans to use the format "25 December 2000" although it is acceptable in the U.S., and the American grammarians Strunk and White, among others, recommend it. It is common in Britain, and somewhat less so in the U.S., to add a superscripted 'st, nd, rd' or 'th' to the day number in informal writing (thus "25th December 2000" or "December 25th, 2000"), but this is generally regarded as superfluous and avoided in formal use.

Similarly, in American speech, "December twenty-fifth" is the most likely form, though "the twenty-fifth of December" is also not uncommon. In Britain the latter is more likely, and even when the month is presented first the definite article is usually inserted in speech, thus "December the twenty-fifth".

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Writing", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki