I went to the cinema the other evening to watch Gone Girl. It was a good film of the
book which has sold in huge numbers. Of course, being an avid reader, I enjoyed the book more than
the film (you can get much more in a book than you can in a film).
Without meaning to, we attended a subtitled version of the
film. This helped avoid the possibility of any kind of “mumble-gate” which was
helpful. But, more than that, I was delighted to see that the subtitles were in
UK English – hooray! So we had rumour (not rumor), apologise (not apologize),
clamour (not clamor), defence (not defense), and even quoted words with the
following punctuation outside the quote like this “example”, which is the way I
like it (not "example,").
But it wasn’t one hundred percent successful. We had a
mysterious word: “ahold” – it seems our American friends like to get “ahold” of
something. It should be: “they can’t get hold of something”, but if they insist
on a spurious “a”, it should surely be “they can’t get a hold of something”. There is no such word as "ahold".
But, never mind, it was pleasing enough to see UK English
subtitles in the UK, despite this being a US book and a US film. And I’m sure in the US
they get US English subtitles - quite right. It’s thoughtful, and I praise them for it.
For an ever-growing list of differences between UK and US
English, see our webpage on WriteItClearly.com: UK-US English differences.