191–200 of 255 posts
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> Unfortunately my teachers were a little unreasonable about this and would still deduct points when I pointed this out... I can see the teacher's perspective here. I don't think it's unreasonable for teachers to mark this down, though I don't think your request to get back the points was unreasonable either. Communicating effectively with your particular audience (the local American audience one in this case) is arg…
If you live in the US, I agree that you must use American English. But even us people that live outside of the US/UK/related countries often got errors marked, because we used the wrong regional variant... In Europe, British English is used as a reference point, but I had a similar problem as GP.
Anecdotal counterpoint, but… I’m a British English speaker, but many of my colleagues are Continental Europeans, for whom English is their second language. Part of my job involves copy editing and, almost without exception, their output is written in American English.
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A better example for why regionality matters: what does "pants" refer to?
Rubbish / nonsense / drivel / twaddle / claptrap etc. Virtually unknown outside the UK.
Having grown up in the US with what I would consider a higher than average exposure to the early 2000s internet, at least compared to other peers my age, much of my ability to read and write actually came directly from social media, instant messengers and online games rather than books. This meant I often found myself struggling with spelling errors in English class which sadly resulted in deducted points from my ess…
> Unfortunately my teachers were a little unreasonable about this and would still deduct points when I pointed this out... I can see the teacher's perspective here. I don't think it's unreasonable for teachers to mark this down, though I don't think your request to get back the points was unreasonable either. Communicating effectively with your particular audience (the local American audience one in this case) is arg…
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I find it fascinating that anyone in the US has this issue, as a Brit this was an issue for anyone with early internet exposure, but I hadn't considered the volume of British/Canadian/Aussie English to have an impact the other way round!
> as a Brit this was an issue for anyone with early internet exposure Same here as a Swedish person who grew up with American media + eventually getting into Internet communities. English exams felt great when I took them, I knew all the answers after all. But then getting the results back was always disappointing, as Swedish schools teach "British English", not "American English", so you better use the British spell…
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I can never remember if I should use grey or gray
The first vowel tells you from which country it comes. Grey is UK English, so think "e" for England. Gray is American English, so think "a" for America.
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I'm fairly certain "dump" is the more commonly used word in the UK. There's the classic children's novel "Stig of the Dump" published in 1963. There's definitely cases where UK English has adopted a new word but American English hasn't. I was surprised to see the word "coupon" used in old UK literature. "Voucher" is the more common word nowadays. People would accuse you of being Americanised if you said coupon.
I’ve never met a fellow Brit who would say ‘dump’ instead of ‘tip’ in this context. I also call my discount-loving fellow Brit friend ‘coupon boy’ rather than ‘voucher boy’!
For many people of my rough age and hobbies (cars/motorsport), Top Gear and other British motoring shows and podcasts have had a massive impact. We had virtually nothing good in the way of TV shows about cars in the 90s/2000s, which meant that anyone watching World Rally Championship and F1 were downloading clips or torrents of them. That, in turn, led straight into finalgear.com in the mid 2000s, before the BBC fina…
There's also the simple nature of being online at 6 AM. What other English-speaking country is awake at that time of day?