In this guest post, British author L.N. Hunter shares thoughts, sometimes humourous (humorous?), about the differences between British and American English.
Oh, the vagaries of language idiosyncrasies! Even though Brits prefer humour to humor, that preference doesn’t apply to humourous. Cambridge, Collins, and other online British dictionaries insist that humorous is the correct spelling.
Confused? Read on.
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Just how different are British and American English?
Can a Briton like me write prose that sounds completely natural to an American?
Languages can’t help but develop dialects — local variations always crop up and spread slowly, if at all. (Things can move more rapidly nowadays, via social networks and media streaming, but many differences have bedded in already.)
American and British English had been gradually diverging ever since the first English speaker set foot on American soil. However, the divergence increased after the War of Independence, and in the early 1800s, Noah Webster set about compiling an American dictionary, capturing local spellings as well as rationalising and simplifying the language further [1].
We all know about things like the letter ‘u’ (e.g., ‘colour/color’) or quaint British spellings vs more logical American ones (‘plough/plow’ or ‘doughnut/donut’), though I can’t really see how anyone can claim the American ‘burglarize’ is a simpler form of the British ‘burgle’ [2] — OK, I admit that one had nothing to do with Webster; I just like the sound of both words.
Another fun word is ‘aluminium/aluminum’ — we think the former is British and the latter American, but it’s more complicated than that. Englishman Humphry Davy (he of the Davy Lamp), was the first to name it, choosing ‘aluminum’ after a brief dalliance with ‘alumium.’ However, a few years later, someone else decided it should be renamed to follow the same pattern as words like ‘sodium’ and ‘potassium’ [3]. By that point the original spelling was embedded in the American lexicon.
Although I’m looking at writing in this article, it’s interesting to note that pronunciation changes since the split are greater in Britain than America, so modern standard American speech is actually closer to Shakespeare’s than that in his home country [4]! I wonder if this is because Britain is smaller, so it doesn’t take as much external influence to affect how we speak. Though both countries contain a vast range of dialects and accents, I’m not sure how important ‘standard’ pronunciation is these days.
Anyway, back to the topic of writing. The majority of the spelling variations clearly belong to one side of the Atlantic or the other — ‘-re’ vs ‘-er’ endings (e.g., ‘centre/center’) or ‘-ogue’ vs ‘-og’ (‘dialogue/dialog’) — but one that annoys me is ‘-ise’ vs ‘-ize’ (e.g., ‘realise/realize’). Because the latter is the sole spelling in the US, people tend to believe that the former is the only acceptable spelling in the UK, but that’s not true. We’re happy with either. Somewhat inconsistently, the very similar ‘-yse/-yze’ suffix (‘analyse/analyze’) is a strict British/American disagreement [5].
Of course, we also have our own words: e.g., ‘lift’ vs ‘elevator,’ and both pants and vests are rather different items of clothing either side of the Pond.
It’s not just distinctive spelling and a few variant words; punctuation can be a minefield, too. Besides single vs double quotation marks [6], there are other oddities such as honorifics: here, ‘Mr’ has no period (or full-stop, as we call it), whereas it does in the US. For us Brits, according to Fowler’s ‘Dictionary of Modern English,’ there’s no full stop if this type of abbreviation (technically, a contraction) includes the final letter of the word, hence ‘Mr’ (the short form of ‘Mister’) has none, whereas ‘Prof.’ for ‘Professor’ requires it. And don’t get me started on nuances of the already gnarly Oxford comma [7].
Surely that’s it. Nope, definitely not! Consider tenses, past continuous (you may know this as something else; the same tenses seem to have a range of names) to be precise [8]. The British inclination is to use the ‘was’ form (e.g., ‘I was walking in the park’) to indicate a continuous event — something going on for some time — and reserve simple past (‘I walked to the door’) for a discrete event, whereas Americans tend to use the latter word form for both continuous and discrete events.
Present perfect (‘I’ve watered the grass’) tends to be used more often in Britain, where Americans are happy with simple past again (‘I watered the grass). I don’t have the space to dig into how complicated tenses can be, and will direct you to Onestopenglish’s article on the topic [9] for more examples and further explanation.
Here’s another: the word ‘please.’ In Britain, we generally use it, and we use it a lot, to be polite, but in parts of America, its perceived overuse can be seen as aggressive or patronising [10]. When speaking, tone of voice can override the default meaning to indicate sarcasm or aggression, but that cue is missing in written dialogue.
We count differently, too: ‘couple of days’ vs ‘couple days’ or ‘a hundred and ten’ vs ‘a hundred ten.’ There’s so much more I could talk about, but I have a word count limit …
Is the solution to move to Canada, where both American and British forms are in use? [11] Or is that even more confusing?
I’ve been talking about US and UK English, but there are many more Englishes out there — take a look at the huge range of dictionaries (and grammar rules) you can select in Microsoft Word and other writing tools. And it’s not just English — other languages have variant forms in different places: e.g., French spoken in France vs Canada’s, or Wales’ Welsh vs that in Argentina.
How much does it all matter? I think the low level variations are relatively unimportant — sure, it can jar slightly to read something containing variant spellings or punctuation, but readers can still understand it. For me, a misplaced apostrophe (an issue global to all English dialects) is more irritating than whether a word ends in ‘-yze’ or ‘-yse’ (especially when I find one of the darn things in my own writing).
I would suggest that if you want to target a flavour of English other than the one you write, it would be beneficial to get some native speakers to take a look at your work. I know that style guides exist, but they’re never complete and can be tedious to plough through.
On the other hand, unless there’s a really compelling need to target a specific dialect, it might be better to stick to what comes naturally and assume your readers are smart enough to work it out. After all, there are dialectical differences within Britain and America, and across the world, and you can’t address all of those in your writing. But, whatever form of English you write, be consistent — pick a set of conventions and stick with it.
Having said that, there is one exception: dialect works wonderfully in dialogue, as long as it’s not overdone. It can strengthen characters’ identity as well as help distinguish between them in speech without tags.
Before I started writing fiction, my knowledge about all of this was more or less at the level of spellings and word choice, and I was confident that I could write American English just as well as I could British English. I was doing this in a perhaps misguided attempt to increase the appeal of my writing to American readers (and, more importantly, editors).
It was only when I had Americans critique my writing that I realised there was a lot I wasn’t aware of, so nowadays I tend to just write in ‘British,’ figuring that will read more smoothly than a faulty attempt at the American vernacular. (Despite having a US publisher, my novel is British English, single quotes and all.)
Putting that another way, to answer the questions at the start: there are many obvious differences between UK and US English, as well as a lot of less obvious ones; and this particular Briton thought writing in ‘American’ would be easy, but has learned that was not the case.
Finally, although Wikipedia tends to be frowned on by academics (but hey, I’m not an academic writer), I would recommend looking at the summary of differences [12] as well as country specific terminology [13, 14] for many more fascinating examples of the richness of our languages.
© L.N. Hunter
References
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/do-burglars-burgle-or-burglarize
[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/aluminum-vs-aluminium
[4] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29761/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents
[5] https://www.oxfordinternationalenglish.com/differences-in-british-and-american-spelling
[6] https://kathysteinemann.com/Musings/single-or-double-quotes-trunk-or-boot-does-it-matter/
[7] https://tovisorga.com/oxford/is-oxford-comma-acceptable-in-american-english
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_English_verb_forms
[11] https://langster.org/en/blog/differences-between-british-and-american-english
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_American_terms_not_widely_used_in_the_United_Kingdom
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_British_terms_not_widely_used_in_the_United_States
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About L.N. Hunter
L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside works in anthologies War and Trickster’s Treats 3 as well as Short Édition’s Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less fun.
When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
Find out more or get in touch via Facebook, Goodreads or L.N.’s Amazon page.
See also: Single or Double Quotes? “Trunk” or ‘Boot’? Does It Matter? by Dr. John Yeoman.
The Writer’s Lexicon series
and additional resources on my Facebook page.
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It’s a minefield, to be sure.
I’m an Aussie, so I tend to use UK spelling mostly. One word choice I’m struggling with, however, is “toward” V “towards”.
What do others have difficulty with?
I always use toward — which makes it interesting when considering beside and besides. One correct without an s and the other correct with.
It is interesting that ‘toward’ and ‘towards’ are pretty much the same, whereas ‘beside’ and ‘besides’ have different meanings. Undoubtedly due to the origin of the words, since that affects how seemingly similar words end up with very different behaviours.
My own ‘toward(s)’ choice tends to be random, except that I do check for consistency across the whole manuscript.
Agreed. Whatever choices we make with style, spelling, and grammar should be consistent within a story.
I’m in a couple of online critique groups and many of the ctitiquers are American, so I always state, when posting, that I’m from the UK and use British conventions.
One pronunciation that Americans use (get wrong, in my opinion) is ‘route’. The way Americans pronounce it, it’s a chaotic running away!
As to the single and double quotes, I’m confused. I seem to remember, from school, using double quotes for speech and single quotes for other things. Admittedly, that was a very long time ago, but I’m pretty sure that was the case. When did that change?
The names of tenses has changed, too. I learned present, future, imperfect, perfect, subjunctive, pluperfect, and the continuous tenses etc. Now some of these have changed their names. Confusing to older generations. Or are these changes simply we Brits adopting the American way?
It’s all a bit of a mess, and conventions evolve and migrate back and forth. I do my best to get the basics right and don’t stress about the rest – readers can work things out. Oh, and adhere closely to guidelines as specified in the submission call – if they want double quotes, I’ll give them double quotes!
As far as writing conventions are concerned, V.M., I believe that consistency is critical. For instance, if neighbour and neighbor appear in the same novel, or inconsistency in the use of single and double quotes, readers will notice. Confused readers may decide to move to another book and/or author.
You’re not getting old. The world is changing, and you’re astute enough to notice. Stick with that story, OK? *wink*
A wonderful post. I’m a Brit, and write in British English. I know I couldn’t get all the nuances of American English right, so don’t even try.
But one thing in American English that never fails to pull me up short is the use of the American ‘yard’ for ‘garden’.
A yard is a paved area, like a courtyard, not a manicured lawn with flowers and trees. Whenever I read this word, I instinctively picture a hard area with possibly outhouses, but no trees or flowers.
I also hate the American word for a hair fringe. Bangs! What’s that about? And how did it come to mean a hair fringe?
I am in a couple of online critique groups, and I always point out that I write in British English.
Thanks for this interesting post.
‘Yard’ and ‘bangs’ get me too.
And, yes, I have to include the Brit disclaimer for critiquers, too, otherwise my seemingly non-standard spellings and punctuation are often ‘corrected.’
Thanks for stopping by again, V.M.
Here’s what https://www.etymonline.com/ says about bangs:
“hair cut straight across so as to form a fringe over the forehead,” 1878 (in singular, bang), American English, attested from 1832 of horses (bang-tail), perhaps from notion of abruptness (as in bang off “immediately, without delay,” though this expression is attested only from 1886).
You might also want to review their listing for yard.
Speaking of critiques, check out what L.N. says about critique sites: https://kathysteinemann.com/Musings/critique-sites/
Great article! Thank you.
My first exposure to (modern) “British English” was the novel Goldfinger. I was 16, had just seen the movie, and just had to read the book. Ian Fleming captivated me immediately with his single quotes, the “tyres” on the cars and the “kerbs” where they parked. I had entered a whole new world.
I never adopted British English, of course (I live in California), but I have claimed certain spellings as my own. In all my writing, I use the color “grey” and my weapons are gauged by “calibre”. I probably also use other British variations without being aware of it, but those two are by design. When my first few novels were published, my editor put up a fight and tried to “correct” those spellings, but I won.
Several of the spellings mentioned in this article were news to me. I never knew why there was a difference between “plough” and “plow”, for instance, or “dialogue” vs “dialog” (I use them both in different circumstances), or “burgle” vs “burglarize”. So I learned something today, which hopefully means I won’t die before tomorrow.
The wonderful thing for me about the spelling distinctions is that I can generally recognize a Brit or Australian (or South African, probably, and even some Canadians) by their spelling. On the internet you rarely hear a person’s voice, so the accent is no help, but the spelling certainly is.
I love the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw which said that the American and British people were “divided by a common language.” I love that division, which adds richness and variation to the language as a whole. As they (supposedly) say in France: vive la difference!
Thanks for taking the time to read my scribbles.
I recently stumbled across the Lingthusiasm podcast, which is a fascinating look at language nuances and differences.
Thanks, John. I prefer “grey” as well.
Looking forward to your upcoming guest post. 🙂
A character in a book I read last year complained that his father never switched the heating on until the temperature reached 40 degrees. My first thought was, ‘Does he live in a sauna bath?
🙂 Yes, Peter, to someone from the USA, 40°F is just a bit above freezing. Let’s see, 40°C = 104°F. Definitely HOT!
Wouldn’t it be easier if the whole world used the same systems of measurement?
Yes, Kathy, it would. Most of the world uses metric now. I find it particularly difficult with recipes that are in cups ot tablespoons. I can cope with pounds and ounces as my scales do both Imperial and Metric, but cups and tablespoons?
I like cups and tablespoons because they provide a visual, and I can guesstimate quantities in a familiar recipe. Guesstimating weight isn’t quite as easy. 😉
It was worse when we had US gallons and Imperial gallons to worry about. Few people realise there is (was) any difference.
Every time I use an old recipe book, the differences between US and Imperial come to mind.
I saw a comment recently saying something like: Fahrenheit is a temperature scale for biology, Celsius a scale for chemistry, and Kelvin the scale for physics.
I enjoyed this article especially when you got to the part about Canadians. It is true we do have a mixture – making it all the more confusing. We add the u in colour and honour etc. but often use the z for realize. It gets even more complicated having French as our second language. Spelling was never my forte, so I had to memorize French spellings of words in University. Now I have to question whether apartment has one or two “p”s in it.
Glad you liked it. I confess I’d struggle without a spellchecker these days and I don’t have the excuse of a second language! (I do take care to set the speller’s language to US or UK, or whichever variant, so that at least it helps me with some of the issues I mentioned.)
Talking about French, a random thing I found out recently is that French accents tend to represent letters that have been removed. Sometimes words were absorbed into English before that change, so we have ‘forest’ while the French have ‘forêt.’ Hôtel is a fun one, because it first appeared before the accent, as ‘hostel’ and then again, after, as ‘hotel.’ Languages are fascinating!
Thanks for the French lesson, L.N. I learned something today.
The world would run smoother if we all communicated with the same words and grammar rules, but language idiosyncrasies make life so interesting. 😉
A wonderful post. I fall foul of this problem, too, especially with on-line critique groups. I always mention that I am a Brit and write in British English.
An example of the problem came up the other day. My characters were on a fishing boat and the captain said ‘you would object more (to the smell) if we didn’t land and sell the fish, and it went off.’
The critiquer didn’t understand ‘went off’.
Actually, when I went to school, in the dim and distant past, we learned that in dialogue we should use double quotes. I since looked it up and found that, according to the source (can’t remember which source) in British English, either is acceptable.
One American thing that really irritates me is a saying the Americans use that means the opposite of what they want. That’s ‘I could care less’.
I believe British English used to require single, but we’re all getting a bit more relaxed about it nowadays. Doubles make more sense anyway, since then speech punctuation is distinct from apostrophes.
Agreed. Double quotes make writing more understandable.
I cringe whenever I hear “I could care less.” My husband used to say it, but he has seen the “grammar look” on my face too many times and now says “I couldn’t care less.”
That one is just laziness, I think. No offence to your husband intended.
LOL, Thomas. I believe it’s more what he has heard from his buddies. One of them is a teacher who often speaks in teenage vernacular. The mind tends to provide responses based on what we hear and see most often.
Excellent article. I’ve learnt from it.
Thanks, Bob!
Thanks.
There’s plenty more on the topic out there on the web if you dig 🙂
Since writing this, I’ve picked up a copy of Matthew Engel’s ‘That’s the Way it Crumbles’ – an entertaining, wonderfully curmudgeonly look at the two Englishes, which examines the way American English is ‘invading’ Britain.
Thank U for a fun and educational post.
My mom (mum) was from a British colony and when she checked my homework she redlined words spelled (spelt) incorrectly according to her Brit education. I’d take the “corrected” version to school and the teacher redlined the Brit words. Ack!
I enjoy this sort of post. Always something to be learned (learnt).
Ta ta.
Fist bumps.
That would make a great short story, Lenny! Imagine the humour (humor) you could inject. 😉
Thanks for your thoughts.
*air high-five*
I put work on Scribophile for feedback and I’ve had so many people ‘correct’ my single quotes to double that I’ve taken to adding a note to most things I post about single quotation marks being the UK convention (or perhaps I should say ‘used to be’ since we do seem to be getting a bit more relaxed about it, but it’s so ingrained in me that I struggle to make the switch).
Don’t forget this paraprosdokian: “Indeed, in many respects, she [Mrs Otis] was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” (Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost.)
An excellent quote, Peter, and the twist comes right at the end — as it should for a true paraprosdokian. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by. I hope it isn’t as cold where you are as it is here. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Originally, the title of this was going to be ‘Two nations divided by a common language,’ but when I came to check *exactly* what the quotation’s wording was, I came across https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/03/common/ and decided there were so many variants I’d be better off avoiding it.