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What about the practice of dropping certain articles? I've always wondered about this:

UK: "He's in hospital" US: "He's in the hospital"

Isn't the latter actually correct English, even in England? When would you use one and not the other?

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Speaking of words that start with H... What about the practice of treating H as if it were silent at the start of a word? Even extending to the choice of using "a" or "an" when placing the article before the word:

UK: "The dolphin will jump through an 'oop" US: "The dolphin will jump through a hoop"

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No worries! I understand what you're saying. I guess we'll disagree then

But one last point:

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And yes, it's drink-driving, but you didn't write that in your orginal post, I copied what you wrote verbatim.

I've never seen your version with the hyphen until I read your post. I've read a number of British news reports that have used the term often but never put a hyphen in it. So that's the official way to write it? In the US it's "drunk driving," without a hyphen.

I wrote that subconsciously, my grammar isn't that great! Although looking it up on the web, "drink-driving" does seem to be the correct way to apply it (as opposed to "drink driving").

My problem with drunk driving is that its use with the word alcohol generally means 2 things:

John drunk some beers. (may or may not be feeling the effects)
John was drunk. (definately feeling the effects!)

When used in the term "drunk driver", I agree that it could mean that either "John drunk some beers and then drove" or "john was drunk while driving", but if you were to ask the average person on the street, I'd hazard a guess that they'd go for the second meaning of the word.

Each to their own though!

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John drunk some beers.

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John drunk some beers.

John drank some beers? Is 'drunk' correct usage?

No idea! Maybe, "john has drunk some beers" would have been a better example.

I'm sure the grammar police will be along to sort this out!

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missing prepositions in US English: I've mainly seen this in cnn.com headlines

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Braces = Suspenders

Which makes me wonder what you yanks call those things that girlies use to keep their tights up

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Courgette / zucchini

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Dinner = Lunch
Tea = Dinner (lower class)

This also varies depending where in the UK you are, and how old you are!

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I get mixed up between the US terms Junior High, High School, School, College and University. Someone explain!

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Marrow / Melon

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No difference: drunk [EDIT]was originally not an adjective.

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I don't count it when they do it in headlines.

That should be, I don't count it as such when they do it in headlines.

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Also Marrow / Melon

Foxed me when I saw "Wallace & Gromit" in NY, they recorded two versions, one where his Gromit's marrow was referred to as a melon for US audiences (and others presumably), but the UK version called it a marrow.

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Many Brits tend to eliminate the t's in certain words. I've also noticed a lot of vowels added to the ends of words ending in vowels (Angeler instead of Angela, Christiner instead of Christina).

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Many Brits tend to eliminate the t's in certain words.

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A marrow is a type of squash (in fact I think it might actually be just a large Zucchini/courgette). It isn't very popular nowadays, but from my childhood I remember it being stringy, slimey and just plain nasty. Could just have been the way it was cooked though...

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they're usually divided up as K-5, 6-8, 9-12. K-5 is usually called "elementary school", 6-8 is usually called "middle school", but used to be called "junior high school", or just "junior high" for short, and 9-12 is usually called "high school". Some places divide it up differently, usually for private schools and very small school districts, just because it doesn't make sense to have three divisions for the small numbers of students that they have.

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Handbag = Purse

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... pronounced it the American way with a "d" in place of the "t" (as in Wa-der)...