Zed's Dead: A Transatlantic Writing Essay

This started out as a rant about British writers writing American characters and not getting the idiom right. Today when I should have been focused on fiction it got its hooks back into me, partly because I'm reading Tim Powers' Declare, and he's not doing such a hot job reverse engineering the process, either, and the whole thing burgeoned into a bit of an essay. In some ways, it's a fanzine article, but even as such, I've no idea where to find a home for it. So I'm posting it here, for what amusement it may provide.

How to Write American: Zed’s Dead, Baby

by Ulrika O'Brien

Every now and then a British writer attempts to write in an American voice, and, well, ow. Dearies, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but some of you need a little teensy bit of help. Mostly you need to take all the unintentional British usage out, by noticing it in the first place. I can’t claim to solve all your Americanization (note the zee-not-zed) woes, but I think I can help a bit. The following rules are mostly rough guidelines, and can in some circumstances be ignored. Don’t. Yes, there are exceptions, and yes, you can make your little red-shirts-versus-storm-trooper arguments for individual ones, but why bother? If you let the debatably British usages slip by, sooner or later they add up and your writing still sounds Pommy. Or at least Canadian. So just listen to Auntie Ulrika, all will be well, right? Great. Let’s get on with it then.

Stop sorting quite so much. Americans fix things, they figure things out, they make arrangements, they set stuff up, they certainly get things squared away, and occasionally they might even sort things out in their own minds, but they only sort things when they’re dividing groups of objects into smaller subgroups by what kind of thing they are, like sorting laundry into whites and colors. If you don’t mean acts of separating the sheep from the goats, don’t sort. And on the subject of things strewn about, Americans clear up only that which was previously unclear. For after supper, or general acts of extracting order from chaos, try "cleaning up" or "tidying up" instead. If you must, you may clear away the dishes.

Ditch most haves and have nots. Well, the haven’ts, anyway. Americans are active, so replace in virtually all cases with forms of doing. The answer in American to the question “Have you let the rhinoceros out?” is “No I didn’t.” Only the question would most likely be “Did you let the rhinoceros out,” anyway. Likewise the answer to “Have you got my thermonuclear device?” would be “No, I don’t.” Be especially wary of colloquial British phrases that actively depend on have. Those need to be strangled outright: Americans don’t have a lie in, we sleep late. We don’t have a moan on someone’s shoulder, or anywhere else. We may cry on someone’s shoulder but we simply never have a cry. We do occasionally have fits, and if it gets bad enough, in some regions we have conniptions. The basic rule for American is that in compound verbs with “have,” if something gets elided, it’s the “have.” Occasionally, it’s okay to use ‘have not’ for vehement denials. As in: “You’ve ruined my story!” “I have not!”

Don’t treat collective nouns as plural. In the US, the committee is unanimous, the rock band was a success, and the government has made an announcement.

Beware of everyday household chores and objects, they are rife with usage variation. Fairy Liquid does not exist in the US, and we do the dishes, not the washing up. Grills are mostly for outdoor cooking – in which case they’re synonymous with barbecues – and grills are always, always something you cook food on top of, not under. The heating source at the top of your oven is the broiler, and not something you cook toast under. That’s what toasters or toaster ovens are for. (And while we’re at it, toast should be buttered while it’s still hot. Cretins.) Americans have no cookers at all, poor little lambs, we only have stoves. And no matter whether there is a bathtub in the same room as the toilet, or not, that room is still the bathroom, or in public places, restroom. The room is never the toilet, that’s reserved for the porcelain font itself. When nature calls, we do not want the toilet, we need to go. Also, we simply do not bathe; we take baths, or we shower, and we never, ever, in a trillion years ‘have a bathe’. (Ye gods and little fishes, you might as well drag out the crumpets and tea towels with images of the Queen Mum.) When we put on our swimsuits and get in water at the beach or in a pool, we are going swimming, or taking a swim. And, in fact, in general Americans are more grabby than Britons. Whereas you seem to passively have things, we forthrightly take them.

We do not bespeak things, we order them custom. Ready made clothes are off the rack, not the peg. We hardly have any trolleys at all, and all of those are street cars. Anything else you might suppose to be a trolley is really a cart. Steel-basketed thing at the grocery store? Cart. Wheeled object for moving medical equipment around? Cart. Rolling equipment for emergency room use – including defibrillator and selection of IV drips? Crash cart. Tea trolleys of course just plain don’t exist (nor, alas, decent tea), but if they did, they would be carts. And in America, virtually nothing comes in tins. Soup comes in cans. Sardines come in cans. Conserved foods that are not put up in jars, all come in cans. Paint comes in cans. About the only things that you find in tins are Danish cookies and fancy teas, and those are fancy, embossed tins, with pry-off lids. Which is why there’s no such thing as an American tin opener. And while we’re still in the kitchen, consider coffee. In America, “coffee” is a mass noun, like butter or sugar, not a count noun, like cup. Therefore Americans will have “coffee,” “some coffee,” or “another cup of coffee,” but under no circumstances would we have “a coffee.”

America has no posh frocks. Nothing posh. No frocks. And ABSOLUTELY no posh frocks. Dear God. If you say “posh frock” you’re not just British, you’re English, and you’re hopelessly plumy and twee on top of it. Except that Americans don’t say “twee.”

Watch your prepositions and articles. Americans worry about people not over them. We fool around rather than messing about. While we’re matriculated university students we’re in college, not at it. Addresses and people may be on particular streets, but not in them, unless they are standing or lying right in the middle of the thoroughfare. (Pavement, by the bye, is whatever we pave our streets or sidewalks with. The paved pedestrian pathways along side are sidewalks.) Conversely when we’re in the hospital (note the article) we may be in a ward, but not on it. We fill forms out, even though, I agree, filling them in would make more sense. We’re perverse that way. And one of the many ways we are different from the Brits is we never say “different to”. The growing hordes of the ill-educated have been known to say “different than” but this is a regrettable abomination and should also be avoided.

“That’s too bad,” is a mild expression of genuine sympathy. Period. When we mean “tough shit,” we say “tough shit.”

“Californian” is a person from California, and nothing else. Americans do not speak of Californian orange juice, the Californian sunshine, or a Californian accent, any more than Britons speak of the Londonian police or the Surreyish countryside. It’s California sunshine, Florida orange juice, and Minnesota Nice. Do not be tempted to add an ‘n’ to make an adjective. It’s just wrong.

A junket is never a banquet. A junket is a subsidized trip wherein vendors attempt to get political favors, good will, positive press, or future business by providing free goods or services, especially luxurious ones. The places where you park your car are not car parks. They may be parking lots, parking garages, or parking structures, but we reserve our parks for industry. Which is to say that we don’t have industrial estates, they’re industrial parks, whereas housing estates are developments. Council housing estates are low income housing. The only things that are estates are what dead people leave behind in their wills, or a large piece of property surrounding a stately home. By the bye, that large piece of property is not itself a park, since parks, unmodified, are public spaces, not private ones. And while we’re on the subject of buildings, neither offices nor apartments (never flats) come in units called blocks. A block is the distance from one city or suburban street to the next. You may have an apartment building or an office tower, however.

Don’t mind us: Americans have no minders. We don’t mind ourselves or one another, though we might watch ourselves, look out for each other, or look after one another, depending on whether you mean manners, caution, or health-related caretaking. Usually we only mind each other when the other is being rude, and even rudeness does not make me my brother’s minder, though if I am of a biblical bent I might claim to be his keeper. Our children have baby sitters or nannies. Spies have handlers. We don’t mind the gap, unless we have an anti-corporate bent, but we do like the cute little t-shirts from your adorably functional subway. Also, switching minds for a moment, we don’t normally substitute “I don’t mind,” for “Yes, please.”

Sports. Note the plural. Remember it and use it. (“Sport,” is someone who is good-natured and game.) Many headaches may be had relating to the transatlantic understanding of sports. Presumably you already know about the difference between what we call football and what you call football. That’s just the beginning. The group of players who share a locker room is called a team. Just that. Never a club, and totally, absolutely never a side. Delete from your vocabulary all colloquial phrases that depend on the equation "side=team". We have somehow retained the phrase “choosing sides” but it’s strictly an oppositional term, not about picking teams. For that reason, it’s impossible for an American to let the side down, though certainly he might let the team down, and possibly he might let our side down, as opposed to those evil them. But really, American usage of “side” in a sports context is tricky for Britons, and is best simply avoided. And trainers. Trainers are people, not shoes. Athletic shoes might be tennies, tennis shoes, running shoes, high tops, Nikes (or whatever brand), but never plimsolls, which are in fact British for sneakers. Also, punters. No punts, ergo no punters. The only punters we have are the ones who punt the ball in football, if the quarterback decides not to try another running play on the final down.

Things vehicular: what the hell is a saloon car? It had better serve whiskey and have swinging doors and a piano player named Lefty if an American drives it. Otherwise it’s a sedan. Not “sedan car.” Just sedan. Estate cars are likewise banned in favor of station wagons. A coach, like a trainer, is a person. Or possibly it’s a species of horse-drawn carriage. What it isn’t, is any kind of motorized vehicle. Whether a cross-country Greyhound or the cross-town local transit, the object you’re thinking of is a bus. Which, unless it’s a horribly pretentious tourist-conveyance, does not have an internal spiral stair or a second storey. Also, a van is only a van if the driver’s seat and the cargo area have no intervening walls dividing them. If a vehicle has a discrete cab for the driver, it’s a truck, irrespective of size or number of axles. The one exception would be moving vans – trucks that movers use can still be called moving vans, despite really being trucks, as in United Van Lines. Don’t ask me why. Obviously, America has neither lorries nor lifts, at least not in the vehicular sense. Lifts may still be the little man’s helper.

What all those vehicles drive on, in the city, is streets. Roads are strictly rural things. Whether there are circular intersections at all varies by region, but if they exist, they are traffic circles rather than round abouts. (And that thing with carousel horses is a carousel, you see, hence the name.) And while all cities have streets, no American city has a high street, though a small and old-fashioned enough town may well have a main street instead. Americans might, on occasion, refer to the commercial establishments lining that main street as shops, but we do not “go out to the shops,” we go shopping. (Generally speaking, be very circumspect when using the noun “shop” at all – we don’t use it the same way you do, and far less frequently anyway.) When we shop for food, that’s grocery shopping, not food shopping, and if we have something wrapped, it’s a package, not a parcel. If we pick up prepared food and take it home, that’s “take out,” or “to go,” but never “take away.”

And so it goes, on and on. Perhaps you think I’m taking the piss, winding you up. Truly, I’m not. We really do talk like this. We say “around” for “about,” most of the time, too. The old saw about being divided by a common language is remarkably apt. It’s not like Americans aren’t equally bad at speaking British. To be avenged on me, you’ve only to point at any of the ghastly hordes still doing bad Monty Python English accents, and Bob’s your uncle.

ETA: Okay, well, I'm putting this back under a friend's lock for a while. The attention is flattering, but a couple of people think I should at least field it to paying markets before I let it turn into an anonymous humor piece floating around the internets. I need a little breathing room to figure out how to revise, and whether to send it out, and if so, where, and I'd like to not have this thing spiral out of control while I'm thinking about all that. So. More about that later, but meanwhile, thanks for all the fish.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

And while we’re at it, toast should be buttered while it’s still hot. Cretins.

My God. When the toast is not hot, it is in my stomach digesting. Which is a little late for butter, if you ask me. Whoever thought eating cold toast was a good idea???

From:

brithistorian.livejournal.com

In my experience, cold toast is excellent at about 10:00 or so, if there's any left from breakfast. Of course, if there is (which is highly unlikely around this house), it was buttered when it was hot.

One of those Insufferable Craft Beer Snobs

Zed's Dead: A Transatlantic Writing Essay

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