Most Common Writing Errors (ONGOING)

UK vs. US English

This chapter talks about the differences between US and UK English. This chapter will be shorter as there isn't much to say about the two.

Read the disclaimer if you haven't already.

I'm writing this from the perspective of an American who grew up with US English.

One of the most common errors I see is toward.

No, that's it: the word "toward." People writing in US English often use towards instead of toward. It was actually a running joke in my old creative writing class. We had one student who always used to point out that "towards" was UK English, not US English, and it became a bit of a meme in the class.

While both are technically correct, if you are writing in US English, you really should try to use toward instead of towards.

But I also understand. I'm American, which means I learned US English. Still, I physically cannot spell theatre as theater. It hurts me.

Yes, I know I just did it, but it hurt, okay?

So I do understand people have preferred spellings. It's just that, for consistency, it's more often than not better to stick to one: US or UK English.

I do not think one is superior. After all, they're both English. The American in me wants to scream RAHHH USA USA WTF IS A KILOMETER🦅🦅🦅 but I won't. Either one is fine to use, just try to be consistent with it.

I'm not saying it's a hard set rule, but for consistency's sake, try not to switch between the two.

Again, there are exceptions to everything, and it's English so even if you use UK English with US English or vice versa, it's not a huge deal, it's just something to try to avoid. If you can avoid it, I don't see why you wouldn't, y'know?

Unless it's spelling theatre as theater. You couldn't pay me to do that.

Whenever I judge a story, I never comment on toward and towards, or theater and theatre, or any other words like that, but it's worth mentioning since, if you want to become a stronger writer, you want to consider being consistent with the language you use.

There are so many different spellings for English words depending on where you live, so the moral of the story is to try to be consistent no matter what type of English you're using.

And also, remember it's different when, say, you're writing in US English but have a character from the UK. I'm mostly talking about in the descriptions in the work, not the dialogue. Dialogue has more leniency because of how everyone speaks differently.

I still use theatre in my fanfics even though I write in US English (I change it for my original stories, though). I'd be curious to hear if you guys do something similar.

Most fanfic writers I know use UK English, which has led to many people commenting saying I misspelled certain words like realise as realize. I have a friend who learned UK English and she was super confused when I told her realise is incorrect for me. It's honestly really interesting to see the differences.

I will make chapters on judging other books in the future, but for anyone who does reviews or judges for contests, make sure you're checking for things like that. You don't want to take points off of someone's story because they used "realize" even though they're writing in US English, so it's not a misspelling, it's correct for them. Just because it isn't correct for you doesn't mean it isn't for someone else, y'know?

Oh, and while on the topic, keep in mind that different countries will date things differently. My laptop is set in Korean, so my date is 2023/09/13, but in America, we do it like 09/13/2023. There are also countries that do it like 13/09/2023. So that's another thing to keep in mind. It's not wrong. While you may think it's weird, it doesn't change that it's not wrong for other countries no matter how they write the date.

In general, writers from different backgrounds are going to write and present themselves differently from you. I encourage you to keep an open mind.

I hope that makes sense.

~End~

I have a lot of topics I will be covering in the future. I'm going to do the topics I have planned first, then I'll get to the requested topics ^^

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