Chicago Style Workout 55: US vs. UK

/ May 25, 2021

Updated January 25, 2025

A mashup of the US and British flags; the US flag occupies the upper left corner and the British flag the lower right

It’s the Little Differences That Matter

This time we’re doing something a little different. Instead of focusing exclusively on CMOS, this quiz highlights some of the differences between US style and UK style (commonly called British style). But we won’t be quizzing you on trunk versus boot or fries versus chips. Instead, we’ll be looking mostly at the differences in punctuation that come up frequently for editors and proofreaders.

For US style, we’ve relied on The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2024). For British style, we consulted New Hart’s Rules: The Oxford Style Guide, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2014), among other sources.

To learn more, take the quiz.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 55: US vs. UK

1. Chicago, like most US publishers, places commas and periods inside closing quotation marks—“like this,” and “like this.” In British style,
2. Chicago, like most US publishers, uses double quotation marks, switching to single for a quote within a quote (“as in ‘this’ phrase”). British style
3. In British usage, a period is known as
4. Chicago uses em dashes—like this—with no space on either side, a style that’s typical in the US. In the UK, en dashes – like this, with a space on either side – are more common.
5. In British usage, en and em dashes are sometimes called
6. British style always retains the Oxford comma, or what Chicago calls the serial comma.
7. In British style, the personal titles Dr., Mr., and Mrs. are spelled without periods.
8. Words formed with prefixes like non- and anti- are more likely to be hyphenated in British style than in US style.
9. In British usage, parentheses are called
10. Words that can end in either -ize or -ise (like realize and criticize) always end in -ise in British usage.

 

Top image: English Language Grunge Flag, by Nicolas Raymond, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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