U.K. vs. U.S. Writing Style and Word Usage

This is another post based on the book, Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve, by Ben Blatt, a book that looks at writing in a way that appeals to numbers geeks like myself as it looks for patterns and quantification of the books that we read and write.

This post looks at writing differences, real and perceived, between writing in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Blatt takes an interesting look at this and I thought I would share some highlights.

First, let’s look at the perception of these differences through the writing of fan fiction based on a popular series from the U.K. Blatt does this by looking at three stereotypical British words and their usage in fan fiction based on the Harry Potter series generated in the U.S. and U.K.

The three words are bloke, blimey and brilliant. The results of his analysis are interesting. He compares the frequency of the use of these words against their usage by J.K. Rowling across the seven-book series.

For ‘bloke’, he found that Harry Potter fan fiction in the U.K. used this word 10% more frequently than Ms. Rowling. In the U.S., it was used 23% more frequently.

‘Blimey’ was used 14% more in the U.K. fan fiction vs. 31% more in the U.S.

‘Brilliant’ is used 38% more often in the U.K. and 45% more often in the U.S.

Blatt then turned the tables and analyzed fan fiction for The Hunger Games series for the use of these ‘Britishisms’ when compared to the writing of J.K. Rowling.

Bloke was used 1.5% more than Rowling’s writing in U.K. Hunger Games fan fiction and <.5% more in writing from U.S. fans.

For brilliant, it was used 13% more in U.K. Hunger Games fan fiction and 3% more by fan fiction writers in the U.S.

Blatt then looked at Erotica in terms of words used and other elements that differentiate U.S. vs. U.K. writing. The table below shows the most distinctive words used in U.S. vs. U.K. erotica.

Most Distinctive Words; British vs. American Erotica
UNITED STATES	UNITED KINGDOM
Comforter	Wanked
Trailer	Knickers
Nightstand	Bloke
Restroom	Lads
Cowboy	Suspender
Semester	Settee
Grade	Shagging
Doctor	Fancied
Motel	Sod
Cops	Bum
Closet	Loo
Railing	Toilets
Downtown	Hugely
Tub	Squashed
Parking	Cope
Scooted	Duvet
Ranch	Sordid
Refrigerator	Pub
Truck	Corridor

Another aspect of U.S. and U.K. differences in erotica that Blatt looked at is the use of accents in this style of writing. I thought this was particularly interesting. The table blow shows the results.

Most Popular Accents in Erotica by Author Location
UNITED STATES	UNITED KINGDOM
Southern	American
British	English
English	French
French	Irish
European	European
American	Scottish
Italian	Australian
Spanish	Southern
Irish	London

There are a few other categories that Blatt uses as the basis of comparison between U.S. and U.K. writing, but I thought these were the most interesting.

I hope these posts are fun for you to read. If you want to look at some of the other quantified writing entries that I’ve posted, you can find them at these links:

• The Road to Hell is Paved with Adverbs
• Don’t Use Exclamation Points in Your Writing
• Gender in Writing Style
• Writer, Heal Thyself!
• Simplicity in Writing

I look forward to your comments.