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Guest Long Read: Britain 101 – Understanding How the British Write Dates, Weeks and Measure Things Differently from an Expat

As a Briton happily marooned in Minnesota, land of 10,000 wind-swept ice-bound lakes, my mind often turns to the minutiae of the differences between the United Kingdom and the United States.

We all know that I say ‘tomatoh’, and you say ‘tomayto’, but, before we call the whole thing off, let’s try and clear up some of this confusion, shall we?

Date order

Like all right-thinking people, I’m a big fan of the British stand-up comedian Stewart Lee. Who has not nodded in agreement, as he discusses, in mock solicitude, the ‘tragic events of the 9th of November’?

9/11 (‘September the 11th ’) was a wake-up call for many reasons; but for the more pedantically minded it was the first concrete global indication of a particular American eccentricity; when enumerating dates, American convention puts the month first. As far as I can tell (by searching on the internet) the USA is one of only two countries in the world that reverses a pretty self-evidently logical convention. The other one’s Belize.

The convention of Day, Month, Year follows the logic of numerical increase. The convention of Month, Day, Year, does not. However, what it does follow is linguistic convention. When speaking we tend to say “November the fifth”, rather than the “fifth of November” (unless you’re talking about Guy Fawkes night of course…). While I haven’t done any research on how linguistic convention might affect other countries (the linguistic date order in German or Italian or Chinese, for instance) I think that this may be a good example of good old American common sense, with everyday usage trumping a conventional logic.

What it is, though, is extremely frustrating. On a daily basis, I have to check which side of the Atlantic any numerological date contraction comes from; is 4/5/14, the fourth of April or the fourth of May?  To channel Stewart Lee and bad taste again for a moment, at least the London bombings of the seventh of July 2005 can be notated by the pretty unambiguous 7/7…

Days of the week

Another confusing thing about dating between the US and UK is the exact location of the beginning on the week. As a Brit, one automatically thinks of each week as beginning on a Monday morning.

Pick up a British-printed monthly calendar, say, like my Doctor Who calendar in the wall here, and you will see each working week starting fresh and new, right on a Monday. However, if one turns to the American-made Game of Thrones calendar hanging in the kitchen, and you will see that the week, in fact, starts on a Sunday, and runs until the following Saturday. In the United States, the weekend, in fact, is not a ‘week end’, at all. According to America, the weekend not only ends the week, but it also begins it.

This causes me endless confusion. When I say to an American friend or work colleague, see you next week, does that include Sunday? When I think that business meeting should be held ‘sometime’ the week of June the 14th, should that week be dated from Monday, as seems natural, or from Sunday, which seems weird?

The reasons for this anomaly are hard to find. The best that I can come up with is thinking about the printing business in mid 19th Century New York. Printing, like many skilled and necessary jobs, was a monopoly of immigrants. In New York, the printing presses were particularly the monopoly of new Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. The Jewish Sabbath, of course is a Saturday; this is the end of the week, with a new week beginning the on next day, the Christian Sunday. Naturally enough, the Jewish printers calibrated their calendars for their own faith, and so the bifurcated American weekend was born.

The UK has had an established state church since the Henry the Eight’s reformation in the 16th century. With the Queen as both the head of state and the head of the church, Christian convention permeates much of what we accept as conventional thinking. We Brits, like the Michael Palin’s dour northern Protestants in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, prefer the misery of a grey and drizzly Monday morning to begin our week. As usual, we’re in the right, but we hate it.

Sub-Zero

As I mentioned, I live in Minnesota, so have a very good idea of exactly how ‘cold’ cold can be (answer: very cold indeed).

We talk a lot about ‘sub-zero’ days in Minneapolis; there are the days where nose hairs freeze, cars wont start, and the kids get a day off school. Any temperature below 0 Fahrenheit is definitely and indubitably cold by any objective and subjective measure.

Conversely, if one uses the centigrade system to measure temperature (a system based on the boiling and freezing points of water – a lot more common in everyday life – rather than on instead of the boiling and freezing points of mercury – not a very commonly encountered instance), ‘sub-zero’, or 0 degrees C is really pretty balmy; a mere 32 degrees F.

The scales merge somewhere around the -40 degrees point (hello, Minnesota), but at more usually encountered temperatures, when the UK Guardian newspaper talks about sub-zero it’s no more than a mild inconvenience (little bit of black ice on the roads, a light frost in the morning, perhaps), while when sub-zero covered in the New York Times, it’s a life threatening snowpocalypse of -17 C.

So why the difference? Isn’t it helpful to know when water is freezing, rather than mercury? Why stick to Fahrenheit, when the Centigrade scale has your kettle boiling for tea at an easy-to-remember 100 degrees C rather than at a both alarming and forgettable 212 degrees F? The answer, again, probably lies in good old American common sense. Centigrade gives us only 100 measuring points between freezing and boiling. While this is logical, it is also hopeless for really telling us exactly how hot or cold it will feel when we step outside. Between the freezing point of water and a sunny summer day, Fahrenheit gives us 50 degrees of measurement (32 – 82 degrees), while centigrade gives us only 27 (0 – 27 degrees). The difference between a temperature of 65 degrees F and 80 degrees F in terms of comfort is clear: between 18 degrees C and 26 degrees C , not so much. Centigrade is science, Fahrenheit is human.

The Pint

This is important because beer. A ‘pint’ is a semi-sacred serving size for the precious liquid in the British public house. It’s just the right amount of beer, not too much, not too little, and a half-pint is just the right amount if you want a smaller amount of beer.

While we all know about the difference between imperial and metric (metric being Canadian and based on multiples of 10, Imperial being Anglo-Saxon and based on multiples of what ever seems to be to hand at the time), what is not common knowledge and is another source of frustration, is the difference between American Imperial and British Imperial. Wait, there’s a difference? Why?

The USA uses what are called United States Customary Units (USCU), not Imperial measures. The USCU is based on the units of measurement in use during colonial times, the so-called English Units (the unit of measurement for heating output, BTU – British Thermal Unit – is an overt holdover from this system). However, the British overhauled their Imperial measurement system in the Weights and Measures Act of 1824, a change that was, unsurprisingly, not followed by the USA. So, while an USCU pint holds 16 fluid ounces, a British pint holds 20 fluid ounces, the US pint being about 20% smaller than the imperial.

So, sadly, the traditional US ‘long-neck’ beer bottle, at 12 fluid ounces is both too much beer if you were after a ‘cheeky half’, (10 fluid ounces) but also, if you drink two bottles, that’s way too much beer: at 24 fluid ounces, a full 20% more than the One True Pint.

Growing up in the UK, I calibrated my tolerance for alcohol based on the number of pints that I could drink; 1 for a sociable time, 2 for not going back to work after lunch, 3 for the beginning of an epic night and so on and so forth. My carefully developed system has been completely thrown out of wack here in the US…and don’t get me started on mixed drinks. British pubs deliver carefully measured amounts of spirits via ‘optics’, clear measuring devices with spigot underneath each bottle hung upside down behind the bar. Just press the glass up against the spigot and hey presto, your booze is measured out. A ‘single’ for a light drink, a ‘double’ for something more serious.

It’s always shocking to me to observe US ‘bartenders’ dispensing liquor by simply upending a bottle and eyeballing it; perhaps an acceptable trade-off for having to deal with a ‘short’ pint?

About the Author: Ben Haywood is a British expat living in Minnesota.

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11 COMMENTS

  1. I live in London. The Christian week also starts on Sunday or so my Vicar says. Because Jesus was a Jew he had to be buried before the Passover Sabbath. The women came to the tomb on the first day of the week, that is the Sunday after the Passover Sabbath, to put spices on the body and complete the burial rituals but found Jesus had risen. One of the Gospel readings for Easter begins ‘it was early in the morning on the first day of the week’ therefore Sunday is the first day of the week not Monday. Our Church diaries have Sunday first unlike commercial ones. Hope that helps.

    • As an Englishwoman of a certain age….I can confirm that I was brought up with Sunday being the first day of the week, not Monday.

      Perhaps the supposed shift to Monday being the first day for some, is actually more a sign of a largely irreligious society for whom Sunday is no more important than any other day of the week?

      I was taught that a week that begins with ‘spiritual observance’ has more of a chance of ending well.

  2. Sorry, but I feel perfectly human with Centigrades. There is a huge difference between 18 and 26. Everyone here know it instantly and without any doubt. You are just reading it from a F° point of view, the which of someone has always dealt with F°. For us, it’s just simpler, less confusing and more importantly consistent with other temperature measures you happen to deal with in your life. 🙂

  3. Japan puts the year first. Year, month, day. 2014年7月25日 🙂

    To me Celsius makes no sense. Sorry.

  4. (In America) I told my mechanic that I had to put 5 or 6 pints of water in my radiator. He laughed and said “Oh you British people”. I didn’t get it – he explained that Americans use cups or quarts to measure liquids.

    • Quite true: while 2 cups = 1 pint & 2 pints = 1 quart, you’re more likely to hear a Yank say “2 cups” or “half a quart” than “pint.” Unless that Yank is me, but then I’m acknowledged by many to be a bit off from the herd…

  5. When I was a cashier at a grocery store, I would periodically have to ask non-American customers to reverse the date on their traveler’s checks because under our dating system, a bank would look at 11/5/2014 (for May 5, 2014) as a check post-dated for November 5th and refuse to honor it.

    One winter I was checking out a Canadian customer and I asked her what the temperature was where she lived. She mentioned it was negative whatever-number-it-was and I was about to ask her if she meant Celsius or Fahrenheit, but really, if there’s a negative in front of the number, it doesn’t matter. It’s cold!

    The only reason I’m partial to Fahrenheit is because that’s the system I was raised using. If I had been raised with Celsius as the norm, then it would be automatic for me to know that 18 C means it’ll be pleasant outside or 35 C means I’m at risk for a heat stroke if I stay outside too long.

  6. WRT date order: this is why I got into the habit years ago of writing my dates numeric day, 3 letter month, numeric year [last two digits.] Nobody ever seems to misunderstand, for instance, 30JUL14 as anything but today’s date, and it still follows a logical day-month-year progression. Of course, it can be problematic for legal forms that request the date mm/dd/yyyy when I’m in a hurry & just scribble it down my habitual way w/o paying close attention… 😉

    WRT temp: what’s the reference to the melting point of mercury about? That’s like -57 Fdeg iirc. Fahrenheit set up his thermometer scale based upon 0 being the temp he could reliably cool brine (saltwater) to before it froze & 100 being body temp [he didn’t realize he was running a bit of a temperature that day.] While perhaps not as sensible as the freezing and boiling points of water, it does offer finer granularity, as was correctly pointed out.in the article.

    Nice to know that we’re still using the traditional pint/quart/gallon stateside instead of some new-fangled measurement cooked up by the Hapsburgs… 😉

  7. Over here in the UK, certain newspapers use Fahrenheit for when it’s hot (so 100 degrees, what a scorcher!) and Centigrade for when it’s cold (just so they can use the minus sign).

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