American and British English differences

Commonwealth English also uses draught for the game of draughts (Americans call it checkers).

See also: the list of irregular verbs.

• Adverbs and adjectives of direction with -wards: British forwards, upwards, afterwards, etc.; American forward, upward, afterward. The -s forms are adverbs only; the forms without -s are both adjectives and adverbs. In American English, the -s forms are fast disappearing; in British English, there is a semantic difference in the usage of the two possible forms. The Oxford English Dictionary states the following about forward and forwards: "/.../ the latter expresses a definite direction viewed in contrast with other directions. In some contexts either form may be used without perceptible difference of meaning; the following are examples in which only one of them can be used: 'The ratchet-wheel can move only forwards'; 'the right side of the paper has the maker's name reading forwards'; 'if you move at all it must be forwards'; 'my companion has gone forward'; 'to bring a matter forward'; 'from this time forward'."
• In British English the word sat is often informally used to cover sat, sitting and seated: "I've been sat here waiting for half an hour." "The bride's family will be sat on the right side of the church." Not all British people do this, but it is not often heard outside Britain. Similarly stood can be used instead of standing. To an American these usages may imply that the subject had been involuntarily forced to sit or stand.

Grammar

• Collective nouns such as team and company that describe multiple people are often used with the plural form of a verb in British English, particularly where one is concerned with the people constituting the team, rather than with the team as a corporate entity; the singular form is used in most cases in American, for example, British "the team are concerned"; American "the team is concerned". But, as in British English, the plural form can be used when the individual membership is clear, for example, "the team take their seats" (not "the team takes its seat(s)"), although it is often rephrased to avoid the singular/plural decision, as in "the team members take their seats". Another example:
  • British English: "The Clash are a well-known band."
  • American English: "The Clash is a well-known band."
• Differences in which nouns are the same in both their plural and singular forms, such as the word sheep. In American English, shrimp is such a word, but in British English the plural of shrimp is shrimps. (Shrimps is occasionally heard in the southern U.S., but is otherwise rare, apart from its colloquial use as a pejorative term for small people).
• In names of American rivers, the word river usually comes after the name (for example, Colorado River), whereas for British rivers it comes before (as in River Thames).
• Use of prepositions before days denoted by a single word. Where Britons would say "She resigned on Thursday", Americans often say "She resigned Thursday". Occasionally, the preposition is also absent when referring to months: "I'll be here December" (although this usage is generally limited to colloquial speech). Intransitive verbs in American English often become transitive; for example, Britons say "I'll write to you" where Americans commonly say "I'll write you"; Commonwealth English: "The workers protested against the decision." American English: "The workers protested the decision."
• The present perfect tense is much more common in British dialects than in American, where the simple past tense is usually used instead. For example, I've gone in British English; I went in American. Similarly, the past perfect tense is often replaced by the past simple tense in the USA; this, even more than the dropping of the present perfect, is generally regarded as sloppy usage by those Americans who consider themselves careful users of the language.
• On informal occasions, the British would use "have got", whereas Americans would say "have" or just "got". "Have" is the only form used in formal writing.
• American English allows do as a substitute for have (the full verb, in the sense of possess), just as for other verbs such as "walk" or "think"; in the past, British English did not allow this, but it is becoming increasingly common. American: "Have you any food? [or, much more frequently, "Do you have any food?"] Yes, I do." British: "Have you any food? Yes, I have." Note that such substitution is not possible in either American or British English for the auxiliary verb have: "Have you eaten? Yes, I have."
• Similarly, in informal usage, American English often uses the form "did" + infinitive where British English would use "have/has" + past participle. "Did you brush your teeth yet?" would be usual American English whereas most British speakers would say "Have you cleaned your teeth yet?". The "have" form is regarded as correct in both countries, however, and is required in all formal contexts. "Did you clean your teeth yesterday" would be correct in both countries.
• The subjunctive mood is more common in American English in expressions such as: "They suggested that he apply for the job". British English would have "They suggested that he should apply for the job" or even "They suggested that he applied for the job". However, these British usages are also heard in the United States.
• Singular attributives in one country may be plural in the other, and vice versa. For example, Britain has a drugs problem while the United States has a drug problem.

Punctuation

• Full stops/Periods in abbreviations: Americans tend to write "U.S.", "U.N.", "Mr.", "Mrs.", "St.", "Dr." etc., while most British will write "US", "UN", "Mr", "Mrs", "St", "Dr" (or even "D'r"), etc., following the rule that a period 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 without a full stop other abbreviations, such as "Prof", "etc", "eg", and so on (so recommended by some Oxford dictionaries).
• It is sometimes believed that British English does not hyphenate multiple-word adjectives, viz: "a first class ticket". This is rare, and considered incorrect. The most common form is as in American English, viz: "a first-class ticket".
• Quoting: Americans start with double quotation marks (") and use single quotation marks (') for quotations within quotations. British do the opposite, but not on every occasion.
• Contents of quotations: Americans are taught to put commas and periods inside quotation marks, whereas Britons 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)

The American style was established for typographical reasons, having to do with the aesthetics of commas and quotation marks in typeset text; however, it is counterintuitive to most people to insert punctuation characters into strings that do not belong in them. Hart's Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the British style "new" or "logical" quoting. This returns British English to the style many other languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, and German) have been using all along. This "logical" style is increasingly popular in America, although it is not generally suitable for formal writing. In fact, the British style is often the de facto standard among Americans for whom formal or professional writing is not a part of their daily life. According to the Jargon File, American hackers have switched to using "logical" British quotation system, because including extraneous punctuation in a quotation can sometimes change the fundamental meaning of the quotation. More generally, it is difficult for computer manuals, online instructions, and other textual media to accurately quote exactly what a computer user should see or type on their computer.

• Letter-writing: American students in some areas have been taught to write a colon after the greeting ("Dear Sir:") while Britons 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.

Note: The BambooWeb:Manual of Style splits the difference here, suggesting British style for punctuation and quotation marks, and American style for double and single quotation marks.

Numbers

When saying or writing out numbers, the British will put an "and" before the tens and ones, as in "one hundred and sixty-two" and "two thousand and three", whereas Americans go with "one hundred sixty-two" and "two thousand three". Americans also have a tendency to read numbers like 1,234 as "twelve thirty-four", which would be "one thousand, two hundred and thirty-four" or occasionally "twelve hundred and thirty-four" in Britain unless discussing the year 1234, when "twelve thirty-four" would be the norm. Similarly, for the house number (or bus number, etc) "272" Britons would tend to say "two seven two" while Americans would tend to say "two seventy-two". The British do, however, commonly read numbers ending in round hundreds as, for instance, "sixteen hundred" instead of "one thousand six hundred".

There is also a historical difference between billions, trillions, and so forth. In the United States, one billion means one thousand million (1,000,000,000), whereas in British English, it means one million million (1,000,000,000,000), with one thousand million sometimes described as a milliard. However, the "American English" (both systems were actually invented by the French) version is now usually used in the United Kingdom. The word milliard is disappearing from use, as are billiard, trilliard and so on.

Other European languages bar Greek favour the British version. In British English, a billion is the second and a trillion the third power of a million, as the prefixes bi- and tri- respectively would suggest. In American English, a billion is the third, and a trillion the fourth, power of a thousand. For this reason, the British system is prevalent in the natural sciences and mathematics generally, and arithmetic particularly.

When using hugely large numbers, it is recommended that either SI units (1,000,000,000 units = 1 giga-unit) or scientific notation (1,200,000,000 = 1.2 × 10⁹) should be used, which removes possible confusion entirely. There can also be no confusion when referring to numbers greater than a million in terms of millions, eg, "thousand million" and "million million". Thus, 1,200,000,000 = "one thousand two hundred million" as opposed to "one point two billion". Alternatively, one can specify which type of number is being referred to, as in "UK billion" or "US trillion" (both equalling 10¹²). See English language numerals for details.

Finally, when referring to the numeral 0, Britons would use "zero", "nought", or "oh" normally, or "nil" in instances such as sports scores and voting results. Americans use the term "zero" almost exclusively, though phrases such as "the team won two-zip" or "the team leads the series, two-nothing" are heard when reporting sports scores. The digit 0, e.g. when reading a phone or account number aloud, is nearly always pronounced "oh" in both languages for the sake of convenience.

When reading numbers in a sequence, such as a telephone number, Britons will use the terms double or triple. Hence the emergency telephone number in Britain is 'triple-nine' (or even 'treble-nine') for 999, while 911 is 'nine-one-one' in America and not 'nine double-one'

See also: How to name numbers in English

Vocabulary

Most of the differences are in connection with concepts originating from the nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, where new words were coined independently; almost the entire vocabularies of the car/automobile and railway/railroad industries (see Rail terminology) are different between Britain and America, for example. Other sources of difference are slang or vulgar terms, where frequent new coinage occurs, and idiomatic phrases, including phrasal verbs. The differences most likely to create confusion are those where the same word or phrase is used for two different concepts. Regional variations even within the US or the UK can create the same problems.

It should also be noted that most American words can be freely interchanged with their British versions within the United Kingdom without leading to confusion, though they may cause irritation. It tends to be only when the situation is reversed that real problems of understanding occur. However, there are some exceptions, such as dumpster, gas, and stroller (in the sense of pushchair) which would be misunderstood by speakers of British English. There are, however, many pitfalls that Americans can fall into without realising it. Be sure you know what you are talking about when talking about a woman's fanny in Britain, since the word indicates the buttocks in the US versus the vagina in the UK. And use caution in the US when asking to be knocked up – in the UK it means to be awakened as with a knock on the door whereas in the US it means to be impregnated. Caution should also be used when asking for a fag (cigarette) in America, as a fag there refers to a homosexual.

Words used only in British English

In Southern Britain the word whilst is used almost interchangeably with while. Whilst is more often used in instruction manuals, legal documents, etc.

The word while means until in some dialects of Northern England. There is an apocryphal story that because of this, railway crossings with signs saying "do not cross the track while the lights are flashing" had to be changed after several fatalities occurred.

See List of British English words not used in American English.

Words used only in American English

Speakers of British English are generally aware of the American English term, but would not generally use it.

See List of American English words not used in British English.

Words with different meanings in British and American English

See List of words having different meanings in British and American English.

Pronunciation

Consonants

Britons and Americans pronounce some instances of t and d differently. In British pronunciation, the two sounds are always distinct and prounounced as /t/ and /d/ respectively. In American English, when either a 't' sound or a 'd' sound occurs between two vowels and before an unstressed syllable, it changes to an alveolar flap, similar to the 'r' in Spanish 'pero'. Consequently, to a speaker of both dialect groups, an American's pronunciation of atom and Adam are homophonous in casual speech. Many Americans, however, slightly aspirate this sound when it derives from a 't' and follows a short i (/I/) or long a (/eI/) sound, thus bitter and rated are distinguishable from bidder and raided. See linguistics and allophones for more information on this category of phenomenon.

Though most British accents pronounce the t in words as a distinctive t, it is common, particularly in Estuary English, to replace the t with a glottal stop.

Most American dialects have not lost the non-prevocalic r. That is, "standard" American English preserves the sound of "r" in all occurrences, whereas British English only preserves it when it is followed by a vowel (see rhotic). However, this holds true neither for all American dialects nor for all British dialects; the dialects of New England and the American South both exhibit a similar sound change found in southern England. In England, however, when a former syllable final /r/ appeared before a consonant not at a word boundary, a schwa was substituted for it, giving British English a new class of falling diphthongs. The non-rhotic North American dialects do not show this. This phenomenon also partially accounts for the interlocution of 'r' between a word ending in a vowel and one beginning with a vowel (such as "the idear of it") exhibited both in some dialects of Britain and in the Boston (USA) dialect of American English. Most other American dialects interpose a glottal stop where "r" appears in the Boston example, and appears to perform the same function of separating adjacent (non-dipthongized) vowels.

Vowels

American English generally has a simplified vowel system as compared to the British dialects. In particular, many Americans have lost the distinction between the vowels of awl and all, as well as caught and cot, the so-called cot-caught merger tending to pronounce all of these with something between a long form of the sound in cot and the "a" of father (those two sounds being distinct in British English).

The long "a" of father, the famous British broad A, is used in many British RP words, especially common ones, in two phonetic situations. Firstly, before three of the four voiceless fricatives, as in path, laugh, pass, past, though not before sh. Secondly, before some instances of n and another consonant, as in aunt, plant, dance. In most northern dialects, not to mention Scotish and Irish, though, the short "a" is the norm. (Australian usually follows RP in the first case, though castle and graph, among others, often have the short vowel, and aunt and can't invariably have the broad one.) An "a" at the beginning of a word (such as "ant") is usually short throughout the country, just as in the American.

British Received Pronunciation has generally lost the long /O:/ as in boat, replacing it with a diphthong that is close to /@U/. Some British speakers still have /O:/, but it appears only as a result of a lost /r/, in words like force. More northerly and westerly British speech preserves /O:/. The British diphthong /@U/ is enunciated as /oU/ or sometimes as /o/ in general American.

In American English, words of two or more syllables, where the first syllable ends with a single consonant, usually use the long vowel sound:

• Patriot, the a rhymes with the a in gate
• Zenith, the e rhymes with the ee in seen
• Vitamin, the i rhymes with the i in bite

In British English the short vowel sound is usually employed:

• Patriot, the a rhymes with the a in sat
• Zenith, the e rhymes with the e in bet
• Vitamin, the i rhymes with the i in sit

In both British and American English a double consonant ending the first syllable usually means the short vowel sound is used.

• Bitter, the first i rhymes with the i in sit

/u/ vs /ju/ etc.

Commonwealth speakers insert /j/ before /u/ (a glide) after more consonants than do American speakers. Both distinguish coot from cute, but most Americans do not distinguish do from due or dew. The relevant consonants are /t/, /d/, /θ/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/.

• Many Commonwealth speakers no longer insert /j/ after /l/ or /θ/, or after initial /s/ or /z/. This is called yod dropping. For them as for Americans 'lute' usually sounds like 'loot' (/luːt/), and 'sue' like 'Sioux' (/suː/); but for all Commonwealth speakers 'assume' is /əˈsjuːm/, not /əˈsuːm/ as in America.
• /dj/ and /tj/ tend to mutate to /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ except in careful speech. This is called stressed syllables. Americans and Commonweath speakers alike say /kənˈtɪnˌjuː/ for continue. Combining this with yod coalescence, many Commonwealth speakers will pronounce residual as /rɛˈzɪdʒuəl/ and statue as /ˈstæˌtʃuː/, the same way as Americans. The /j/ is preserved even if lack of stress alters the quality of the vowel so it is not /u/, e.g. penury /ˈpɛnjəri/.
• The glide never applies where /u/ is spelled 'oo' or 'ou': as with 'coot' and 'mousse', so with 'doom' and 'toupée'.

Affixes

-ile

Words ending in -ile (fertile, docile, missile) are pronounced with the last syllable sounding the same as isle in Commonwealth English (/ˈfɜːtaɪl/), and in American with a short, reduced schwa (rhyming with turtle (/ˈfɝɾəl/), and with fossil and whistle respectively), although exceptions can be found, such as reptile.

-ine

Some multisyllabic words such as iodine and melamine are pronounced with the last syllable sounding the same as dean or mean in Commonwealth English (/ˈaɪədiːn/), and like dine or mine in American (/ˈaɪədaɪn/).

-ary

Where the syllable preceding -ary is unstressed, Americans pronounce the suffix as two syllables, with secondary stress on the first of these. British speakers elide the a to give a single unstressed syllable. So military is American /ˈmɪlɪˌtɛri/ and British /ˈmɪlɪtri/.

Words ending in -rary form an exception in Commonwealth English, where in careful speech some may feel obliged to distinguish the two r's. Thus arbitrary would sound /ˈɑːbɪtrəri/ rather than /ˈɑːbɪtri/; Americans would further expand the schwa to a fully-fledged /ɛ/: /ˈɑːrbətrɛri/.

Miscellaneous pronunciation differences

The slashes normally used to enclose phonetic transcriptions have been omitted from the following table to improve legibility.

See also

• International Phonetic Alphabet for English
• SAMPA chart for English

Miscellaneous

Both British and American English use the expression "I couldn't care less" to mean the speaker does not care at all. In American English, the ironic "I could care less" (without the "n't") is synonymous with this, while in British English, "I could care less" is most certainly not synonymous with this, and might be interpreted as anything from nonsense to an indication that the speaker does care.

In his history of the Second World War, Winston Churchill records that differences in the interpretation of the verb "to table" caused an argument between British and American planners. The British wanted a matter tabled immediately because it was important, and the Americans insisted it should not be tabled at all because it was important. In British English, the term means "to discuss now", whereas in American English it means "to defer".

In a similar vein, the verb "to slate" means "to schedule" in the US but (informally) "to disparage" in the UK. Thus a headline such as "Third Harry Potter Film Slated" has two very different interpretations.

Building layout

American English and British English differ in how they describe the floor levels of buildings, a distinction that often causes confusion in each other's countries.

Put simply:

• American English floor number minus 1 = British English name
• British English floor number plus 1 = American English name

Most European countries and Commonwealth Nations follow the same convention as the British, although the former Warsaw Pact countries of East Europe generally follow the American convention, since that was what was used in Russia.

See also

• American English
• Australian English
• British English
• Canadian English
• Caribbean English
• Commonwealth English
• Hiberno-English
• Indian English
• Jamaican English
• Liberian English
• Malaysian English
• New Zealand English
• Singapore English
• South African English

• Distinguishing accents in English

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