Formal written English
Encyclopedia : F : FO : FOR : Formal written English
Formal written English is a version of the language which is almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world. It takes virtually the same form whether it is written in Seattle, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, London, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, Johannesburg, Harare, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Sydney or Auckland. In spoken English, by contrast, there is a vast number of differences between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang, colloquial and regional expressions. In spite of this, local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited.
Learners of English are in danger of being misled by native speakers who refer to American English, Australian English, British English or other varieties of English. While it is true that many regional differences between the forms of spoken English can be documented, the learner can easily fall into the trap of believing that these are different languages. They are instead mostly regional variations of the spoken language and such variations occur within these countries as well as between them.
The differences in formal writing that occur in the various parts of the English-speaking world are so slight that many dozens of pages of formal English can be read without the reader coming across any clues as to the origin of the writer, far less any difficulties of comprehension.
A popular American website about errors in English, written by a professor at a west coast U.S. university guiding his students towards preferred constructions of written English, contains almost nothing among its hundreds of entries with which a counterpart thousands of miles away in Sydney or London would disagree. Certainly, disputes about pronunciation and colloquial expressions used in speech abound. But in the written language these are relatively few.
A supporter of the view that there is an Australian written English, for example, and an American written English may counter that many examples appear in the lists of differences below. But to put this in perspective, the Oxford English Dictionary contains around 500,000 entries. And among the differences in regional usage that do occur, the majority are specialized or regional words which appear quite rarely in formal writing.
Differences in spelling such as "color" and "colour" arise more frequently, depending on the subject matter, but these cause no difficulty in comprehension. (Indeed, such spellings are sometimes used on purpose outside their home country in the marketing of products in order to convey some sense of exotic provenance.)
The scientific world has already taken advantage of the fact that there is just one version of English in formal written communication by making it the common language of scientific reports. Very occasional conflicts of spelling in this area have prompted formal decisions on which word or spelling to use. Committees have ruled, for example, that in scientific writing it is "sulfur" not the British "sulphur" and "aluminium" not the U.S. spelling "aluminum". But the number of such rulings is insignificant in the context of a vocabulary of half a million words.
English speakers, after all, share a common linguistic heritage. Shakespeare's writing predates the establishment of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. Successful novels of the mid-19th century such as The Moonstone by the British Wilkie Collins, or Uncle Tom's Cabin by the American Harriet Beecher Stowe were published simultaneously in Britain and America without any thought that one or other audience would have any difficulty in understanding the writing of someone from another country. Equally, 150 years later, The Economist newspaper is published in London but sells more than half its printed copies in North America.
Although the regional variations in written English may be slight, the spoken language is another matter. But even here the broad geographical distinctions often used may sometimes have more to do with nationalistic sentiments than rigorous study of the objective facts. Speakers of General American and the British Received Pronunciation may find no difficulty in understanding each other's accents as a result of long exposure in the media, aided by the clarity of pronunciation that is a feature of both these accents. Yet, both may struggle to understand a broad accent from Glasgow, Scotland, or from rural Tennessee, or from Cornwall, a county in the southwest of England, or from the south side of Chicago, Illinois. By contrast, the Cornish accent may be easily understood by the inhabitants of the islands off North Carolina, where the accents are still little changed from their Cornish forebears. Equally, the accent of some parts of Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is virtually indistinguishable to an outsider from the accent of parts of Northern Ireland. Under the weight of such evidence, the generalization that there is a single British accent or a single American accent begins to become unsustainable.
Lists of variations in formal written English
What follows is a list of expressions and constructions that appear in formal written English and are given different meanings in different countries. Differences in pronunciation, in slang and colloquial expressions, and in regional and specialist terms are dealt with in other articles. Where it is disputed that a word or expression qualifies to be used in formal writing, it will be omitted from this list and appear instead in one of the articles on spoken regional variations.
Lists of differences in spoken English, as well as most English dictionaries, mark words as colloquial, slang, vulgar and so on to guide the speaker on when it may be inappropriate to use certain words. This list does not include such distinctions because, describing only formal written English, it excludes these categories of words.
Equally, the lists below do not include words with which people in one or another country would simply be unfamiliar. The average speaker has a vocabulary of around 8,000 words. There are many words he or she has not yet come across and dictionaries are available to provide these meanings. To qualify for inclusion a word or structure must be widely familiar in more than one country and yet have different meanings in different countries when used in formal written English.
Lastly, regional differences in punctuation are not included as they are dealt with in other articles.
Country abbreviations used in the lists are:
| AU | Australia |
| CA | Canada |
| GB | United Kingdom |
| HK | Hong Kong |
| IE | Ireland |
| IN | India |
| NZ | New Zealand |
| US | United States |
| ZA | South Africa |
| ZW | Zimbabwe |
Differences in the meaning of individual words
Differences in the meaning of individual words are among the most significant.
This list includes such words as "pavement" because this word means the paved area at the side of a road set aside for pedestrians in British usage but the paved surface of a road in U.S. usage.
The list does not, however, include "sidewalk" because this has the same meaning in both U.S. and British usage. The distinction is that although "sidewalk" is generally understood in Britain it is almost never used since the word "pavement" is the usual term. A non-native learner of English might therefore decide always to use the word "sidewalk" to avoid being misunderstood in different parts of the world.
| Expression | Meaning in countries listed | Meaning in countries listed |
| pavement (noun) | paved area at side of road set aside for pedestrians (CA, GB, HK, IN) | paved surface of road (US, CA) |
| biscuit (noun) | A crisp, generally sweet, confection (AU, GB, HK, ZA, IN) | Soft, tender, savoury pastry, similar to scones often eaten with gravy (US) |
| corn (noun) | Grain, or a cereal crop, as in "cornfield" (GB) | Maize (AU, CA, US) |
| table (verb) | To put forward a proposal (AU, CA, GB, HK, IN) | To abandon a proposal (US) |
Differences in grammar
This section is for differences in grammar that may cause confusion or misunderstanding. These will be listed in the table below, though none has been identified so far. As with the meanings of individual words, they are not listed if they are widely understood in a country even though used rarely.
| Construction | Meaning in countries listed | Meaning in countries listed |
| Spit | Present tense of expectorate (For past tense 'spat' is used) "Yesterday I spat on the floor." (AU, ZA) | Both present and past tense, as in "Yesterday I spit on the floor." (US) |
This could cause confusion as the statement of an American that "I spit on the ground," referring to an action undertaken in the past could be confused by an Australian as use of the present tense to state an implied fact.
Differences in spelling
These differences are the least significant in practical terms since they rarely represent any obstacle to understanding. Those that may cause misunderstanding are listed first.
| Spelling in countries listed | Spelling in countries listed | Spelling in countries listed |
| storey (AU, CA, GB, HK, IN, ZA) | story - meaning the level of a building (US) | |
| vice - meaning a tool (AU, GB, IN, ZA) | vise (US) | |
| colour (AU, CA, GB, HK, ZA) | color (US) | |
| some verbs can be spelled either -ise or -ize at the end; for example, recognise or recognize; amortise or amortize, visualise or visualize, etc. (CA, GB, ZA) | These words always end in -ize; for example, agonize, amortize, recognize, visualize (US) | These words always end in -ise, for example: agonise, amortise, recognise, visualise (AU) |
| analogue (AU, CA, GB, HK, IN, US, ZA) | analog (US, CA) | |
| centre (AU, CA, GB, HK, IN, ZA) | center (US) | |
| flavour (AU, CA, GB, HK, IN, ZA) | flavor (US) | |
| honour (AU, CA, GB, HK, IN, ZA) | honor (US) | |
| programme (often, but not always, spelled "program" when referring to a computer application) (GB, HK, ZA, sometimes AU, CA) | program (AU, CA, HK, US) | |
| theatre (AU, CA, GB, HK, ZA, sometimes US) | theater (US) |
Written English – regional differences
Spoken English – dialects
- List of dialects of the English language
- American and British English differences
- General American
- English speaking Europe
- California English
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.