Written forms of British and American English as found in newspapers and textbooks vary little in their essential features, with only occasional noticeable differences.
Differences between the two include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary (lexis), spelling, punctuation, idioms, and formatting of dates and numbers.
However, the differences in written and most spoken grammar structure tend to be much fewer than in other aspects of the language in terms of mutual intelligibility.
[2] This divergence between American English and British English has provided opportunities for humorous comment: e.g. in fiction George Bernard Shaw says that the United States and United Kingdom are "two countries divided by a common language";[3] and Oscar Wilde says that "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language" (The Canterville Ghost, 1888).
American accents tend to raise the tongue whenever the phoneme /æ/ (in words like TRAP, DANCE, BATH) occurs before the consonants /m/ and /n/.
Words like bitter and bidder are pronounced the same in North America, but not England, due to a phenomenon called flapping involving /t/ and /d/ between vowels.
The familiarity of speakers with words and phrases from different regions varies, and the difficulty of discerning an unfamiliar definition also depends on the context and the term.
It is generally very easy to guess what some words, such as BrE "driving licence", mean, the AmE equivalent being "driver's license".
[12] Speakers of BrE usually find it easy to understand most common AmE terms, such as "sidewalk (pavement or footpath)", "gas (gasoline/petrol)", "counterclockwise (anticlockwise)" or "elevator (lift)", thanks in large part to considerable exposure to American popular culture and literature.
Terms heard less often, especially when rare or absent in American popular culture, such as "copacetic (very satisfactory)", are unlikely to be understood by most BrE speakers.
The UK has city academies, which are independent privately sponsored schools run with public funding and which can select up to 10% of pupils by aptitude.
A few university-specific exceptions exist: for example, at Cambridge the word paper is used to refer to a module, while the whole course of study is called tripos.
A dissertation in AmE refers to the final written product of a doctoral student to meet the requirement of that curriculum.
In the US, it refers to a post-high school institution that grants either associate's or bachelor's degrees, and in the UK, it refers to any post-secondary institution that is not a university (including sixth form college after the name in secondary education for years 12 and 13, the sixth form) where intermediary courses such as A levels or NVQs can be taken and GCSE courses can be retaken.
Some universities also have a residential college system, the details of which may vary but generally involve common living and dining spaces as well as college-planned activities.
Many institutes in both countries also use the term first-year as a gender-neutral replacement for freshman, although in the US this is recent usage, formerly referring only to those in the first year as a graduate student.
Student itself has a wider meaning in AmE, meaning any person of any age studying any subject at any level (including those not doing so at an educational institution, such as a "piano student" taking private lessons in a home), whereas in BrE it tends to be used for people studying at a post-secondary educational institution and the term pupil is more widely used for a young person at primary or secondary school, though the use of "student" for secondary school pupils in the UK is increasingly used, particularly for "sixth form" (years 12 and 13).
In BrE, the term marginal constituency is more often used for the same and swing is more commonly used to refer to how much one party has gained (or lost) an advantage over another compared to the previous election.
In AmE, having "high turnover" in a business context would generally carry negative implications, though the precise meaning would differ by industry.
If a finance company takes possession of a mortgaged property from a debtor, it is called foreclosure in AmE and repossession in BrE.
In BrE, the term curriculum vitae (commonly abbreviated to CV) is used to describe the document prepared by applicants containing their credentials required for a job.
The central reservation on a motorway or dual carriageway in the UK would be the median or center divide on a freeway, expressway, highway or parkway in the US.
The equivalent legal phrase in the UK is drunk in charge of a motor vehicle (DIC) or more commonly driving with excess alcohol.
In the UK, the term sleeper is used for the devices that bear the weight of the rails and are known as ties or crossties in the United States.
In American television the episodes of a program first broadcast in a particular year constitute a season, the entire run of the program—which may span several seasons—is called a series.
[46]: 23 [47] The term the Government always takes a plural verb in British civil service convention, perhaps to emphasize the principle of cabinet collective responsibility.
For instance, BrE: SuperHeavy is a band that shouldn't work or First Aid Kit are a band full of contradictions;[49][50] AmE: The Clash is a well-known band.BrE: FC Red Bull Salzburg is an Austrian association football club; AmE: The New York Red Bulls are an American soccer team.Proper nouns that are plural in form take a plural verb in both AmE and BrE; for example, The Beatles are a well-known band; The Diamondbacks are the champions, with one major exception: in American English, the United States is almost universally used with a singular verb.
British and American English differ in the preferred quotation mark style, including the placement of commas and periods.
In sports statistics, certain percentages such as those for winning or win–loss records and saves in field or ice hockey and association football are almost always expressed as a decimal proportion to three places in AmE and are usually read aloud as if they are whole numbers, e.g. (0).500 or five hundred,[75] hence the phrase "games/matches over five hundred", whereas in BrE they are also expressed but as true percentages instead, after multiplying the decimal by 100%, that is, 50% or "fifty per cent" and "games/matches over 50%" or "...50 per cent".
[76] The American practice of expressing so-called percentages in sports statistics as decimals originated with baseball's batting averages, developed by English-born statistician and historian Henry Chadwick.