The Basic Differences Between British and American English Grammar



by editor PrecisionEdit



Many English speakers do not realize the vast differences between American English and British English. Some might falsely assume that the two are filled with more similarities than differences, and that the rules separating American English and British English are simply finicky points that are arguable and not especially noteworthy. The fact remains that what might be considered… Continue

The August 2008 WritersUA (formerly WinWriters) Update has an informative article on the editor's role in maintaining modular documentation titled Editing Modular Documentation: Best Practices

Veni, vidi, vici is a Latin phrase familiar to anyone who's studied classical history. Julius Caesar's pithy proclamation requires twice as many words in English. Grammatically, these Latin verb forms are derived from the infinitives venire (to come), videre, (to see), and vincere (to conquer). According to The American Heritage College Dictionary, an infinitive is defined as "a verb form that functions as a substantive while retaining certain verbal… Continue

If you're like most people, your 7th grade English teacher instilled in you a fear of ending a sentence with a preposition. NEVER! DO YOU HEAR ME? you can hear the voice saying as the wooden pointer whaps across your desk.



I am here to tell you that your venerated grammar didact, while blindly following the orders of prescriptivist academics, was, well, uh, wrong. Or at least misguided.



By definition, a preposition means "something placed before"; in grammar, that… Continue

Typo of the Day for Librarians is a blog aimed at helping librarians identify and eliminate typos in online catalogs. A collaborative work, the blog is maintained by various librarians who encounter mistakes in bibliographic databases and pass on the tips to other librarians as possible flags to correct. Bloggers discuss frequency and probability of the error and often provide an interesting fact or observation about the mistyped word. The current… Continue

A Londoner tells you he's pissed, and you might be inclined to ask him what's wrong. He'll look at you quizzically, and you'll think he's being reserved. It's perfectly all right to be pissed, he says, and you might still ask him what's wrong. Then he'll really be pissed. Such are the pitfalls in communicating across the pond. You think he's angry, and he's just telling you he's drunk.



For the most part, Brits and Yanks have managed to bridge the linguistic divide and make themselves… Continue

No one likes to be told to do something twice, so listen up! Look for ways to trim the fat from your writing by looking for redundancy. For instance, in the sentence "the intent of an initiative is clearly apparent," you can snip "clearly" right out. Something that is apparent is "clear or manifest to the understanding." Cutting out the fat not only shortens your writing, it makes it stronger and aids readers' understanding.



In the following sentences, cut out the… Continue

Papercheck is a smartly designed online editorial resource. For a fee you can upload documents to be proofread or edited professionally. The company offers support for many types of documents—Web sites, e-mails, memos, proposals, grants, sales contracts, brochures, and other formal business documents. As is evident from the pricing structure, time is money. Criteria are clearly spelled out: choice of U.S. or British English, number of words per… Continue

Related to an earlier post, even lawyers are keen to unsmother the verb.