Talk:American and British English differences
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To-do list for American and British English differences:	· history · watch · refresh
Count and mass nouns. Plurals. Ellipsis of articles. Modal verbs. Aspect; more on tenses. Complementation. Adverbs and prepositions (about, round, around). Disjuncts. Determiners, hedge words, intensifiers. Word order. Rewrite vocabulary section. Tag questions. General cleanup.
Priority 3

What people prefer

I'm not sure if this belongs here, but I couldn't find a better place to put it, so here it is.

Anyway, I have noticed that there is often debate as to whether standard English or American English is more "correct". I have also noticed that normal English people object more to American spellings than American people do to proper English spellings. Therefore, since Americans don't seem to mind English spellings as much as we mind American spellings, if everyone used English spellings, more people would be happy! Am I right?

Oh yeah, also - people from both England and America agree that English spellings are prettier and more aesthetically pleasing, for example "Colour" is more colourful than (ugh) "color"!90.205.80.229 (talk) 14:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

This argument is hard to distinguish from trolling. —SlamDiego_←T 21:20, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I can think of a good reason for that...... -- Q Chris (talk) 07:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep Both!--Roguexviii (talk) 09:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

A few institutional nouns take no definite article

In BrE one can write in Parliament or Parliament's troops is this not so in American English? Could one write in Congress in American English or would it have to be in the Congress?

This came up in an edit on the article First English Civil War. An edit was made that changed:

There was some continued organised Royalist resistance in Scotland which lasted until the surrender of Dunottar Castle to Parliament's troops.

to

There was some continued organised Royalist resistance in Scotland which lasted until the surrender of Dunottar Castle to the Parliament's troops.

But one would write in BrE:

There was some continued organised Royalist resistance in Scotland which lasted until the surrender of Dunottar Castle to the Long Parliament's troops.

and not to do so would be wrong. If this is a difference between BrE and AmE, please will someone add Parliament to the 'institutional' nouns paragraph. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

As a native AE speaker, I'd consider both "in Congress" and "in the Congress" to be acceptable, but the former is far more common and, to my mind, preferable. The latter has something of an old-fashioned ring to it. On the other hand, it's always "in the House" or "in the Senate" -- never "in House" or "in Senate". JamesMLane t c 02:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It's an English article, so English style should be used, per the MoS. If someone changes it, revert it, with this explanation in the summary. Avengah (talk) 00:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I was not asking clarification for permission to edit the article, but suggesting that a regular editor of this page add this difference to this page. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

'To do' in British English

High, there. I'm sorry, I don't know anything about this phenomenon or what it might fall under, but it seems to me that the ellipsis/replacement of a verb after a modal works differently in British and American English. Like in British English, the response to 'Can I walk though the garden?' would be something like 'Yes, you can do', but in American English, you'd have something more like 'Yes, you can' or 'Yes, you can do so'. Does anyone know what I'm trying to get at, or am I just crazy? Rdr0 (talk) 16:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

In *both* forms of English (not just AmE), you can say something like

She didn't apologize, although she should have. This is unquestionably common-core international standard English.

However, in BrE, an alternat(iv)e construction with propredicate do is also used (I believe usage may vary from region to region and even from speaker to speaker):

%She didn't apologize, although she should have done. This is never heard in AmE.

The article makes no mention of this. I'd add it myself but I ain't got the time now. Jack^(Lumber) 20:58, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, my personal observation/opinion (sticking my neck out here) is that in BrE the normal constructions are "Yes, you can" and "... she should have done" or "she should have" (both of these latter sound equally normal). "Yes, you can do so" would also be standard (but a bit long-winded) - but NOT "Yes, you can do". In other words, it's hard to find any clear consistency, or a general "rule" that says (e.g.) BrE does/doesn't use the pro-predicate while AmE doesn't/does. But it does seem to be the case that a speaker of BrE is more likely to tack a do or a done on the end of such a sentence. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 21:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, I purposely changed the example provided by Rdr0 because "Yes you can do" sounded terribly awkward to me. I (have) just checked the sources--Algeo, Hargraves, Peters, and Trudgill and Hannah (now that was a useful serial comma, wasn't it Snalw?;-) all mention this difference. Jack^(Lumber) 18:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

please

ts called 'english english' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.241.232 (talk) 07:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Small correction

The example "He majored in law at Harvard" is wrong for two reasons: First, Americans do not use the term "major" for the study of law because law is a graduate degree. The term "major" is used primarily (exclusively as far as I know) for undergraduate studies. (Just as a student in medical school would never say he is "majoring" in medicine). Secondly, Harvard College does not use the term "major" at all. They call a student's area of undergraduate study a "concentration."

Lgin (talk) 18:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. The wrong example must have slipped in only recently--while the "regulars" were off guard. Thank you! Jack^(Lumber) 18:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Inaccurate / arguably incorrect assumptions in Times section

As a Brit I feel I have to point out some inaccuracies with the description of how we discuss times - I don't know who wrote it, but I'd hazard a guess it was an American.

For example,

whereas Britons often use a point, 6.00, although it is becoming increasingly popular to use a colon.

Right from my initial teaching about time at primary school (15/16 years ago), I was always taught to use a colon when writing times. I rarely see times written with a single full stop between the hour and minute, and I'd venture that if anything, that usage has crept in from either the US or overseas. I know that passage has a citation needed remark next to it, but even so, it remains for the time being. Also,

Often, in the UK, 18:00 will be written as 1800h, or 06:00 as 0600h - representing the military speak "oh-six-hundred-hours", even if people would usually read it aloud as "six o'clock". This has become popular in text messaging since it is easier to type an "h" than a colon.

Erm, what? I wholeheartedly disagree - nobody suffixes an "h" onto times when they write them in the 24-hour style, because it's plainly obvious exactly what it is. In fact, outside of military usage I rarely hear 24-hour format times spoken with the word "hours" after the time itself - it's self-evident.

Whenever I discuss times with people in texts, you just say "see you at 6?" (although my sister insists on abbreviating to "cu @ 6 k?" which she knows really winds me up!) So again, I take issue with this assumption that most Brits describe times in the manner mentioned in the article.

However, I am by no means an authoritative source on BrE usage - just a real-world speaker ;) Anybody else have thoughts on this?

Christopher (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nearer/Closer

In the section where it talks about the differences between prepositions and adverbs, it has this statement: BrE sometimes uses to with near (we live near to the university), while AmE avoids the preposition in most usages dealing with literal, physical proximity (we live near the university), although the to reappears in AmE when near takes the comparative or superlative form, as in she lives nearer/nearest to the deranged axe murderer's house.

From what I've observed, someone would be pretty unlikely to say "nearer to" in American English; they'd be far more likely to say that in Britain. Americans would seem to use closer/closest to far most often, as nearer to, imo, is kind of an awkward way to say it, and from what I understand most Americans would agree. Yet it seems to me that in Britain it's much more often-used. Am I mistaken in this? If I'm not I think this should be made clear as well. bob rulz (talk) 08:09, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that section is completely unsourced. And no, you're not mistaken. In the British National Corpus, closer to outnumbers nearer to by 3.97:1; in the BYU Corpus of American English, the ratio is 35.85:1. Jack^(Lumber) 01:03, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

An historic event

See this edit to Historical revisionism (negationism), and this website: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/a-an.html. A mention of this difference on this page would be useful. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

We talked about that a year ago or so. Archive! Jack^(Lumber) 14:17, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

(to Philip Baird Shearer) Kind of you to highlight my edit for this. I remain confused as to whether you thought I was changing it from British English to American or vice versa. Rushmore cadet (talk) 18:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Highways

I believe there are more exceptions than southern California to the 'no-article' rule in AmE. In New Orleans, for example, Interstate 10 is always "the I-10", and I think it applies to at least some other places as well. Technically "the I-10" has a ring of redundancy that "the 5" does not. Any thoughts from other places? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.250.248.36 (talk) 22:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's an inconsistent hodgepodge in the US; some places/highways are in the habit of adding the "the", some are not. The I-10 may be The I-10 in New Orleans, but it's I-10 several states to the north!

In a similar vein, colleges/universities are wildly inconsistent. I went to UT (Univ of Texas), whereas my brother went to "The UW" (Univ of Washington). Go figure.

Not sure how this is dealt with in the UK, but I'd be careful about making any generalizations about "American usage" here.

64.48.78.13 (talk) 04:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Ireland belongs here

I don't want to start a war, but the article is not balanced. There is an argument to be made for describing North American English and European English. The article here mentions only Northern Ireland, but European English does not stop at the border, and while Hiberno-English is spoken in the Republic of Ireland it is not universally spoken and "standard" European/British English is, modulo accent and some vocabulary and grammar. (The same can be said about Canadian English and US English.) How can we improve this article to do a better job of description? One option would be to move it to North American and European English. (Australian, New Zealand, and South African English would I think be closer to European English.) Again, I am nt trying to start trouble here. I'm not in any way opposed to the word "British" and indeed I consider Ireland one of the British Isles (which some people gripe about). But there's no room for English as spoken in Ireland here it seems to me. -- Evertype·✆ 10:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)