Editing British English (section)

== Standard British English ==
[[Standard English]] in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the {{Lang|fr|[[Académie Française|Académie française]]|italic=no}} with French or the [[Royal Spanish Academy]] with Spanish. Standard British English [[Comparison of American and British English|differs notably]] in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard [[American English]] and certain other standard English varieties around the world. [[American and British English spelling differences|British and American spelling]] also differ in minor ways.

The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over a century as [[Received Pronunciation]] (RP). However, due to [[language change|language evolution]] and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing [[Prestige (sociolinguistics)|prestige]] or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist [[Geoff Lindsey]] for instance calls Standard Southern British English.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lindsey |first=Geoff |title=English after RP: standard British pronunciation today |date=2019 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-3-030-04356-8 |location=Cham, Switzerland}}</ref> Other scholars suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England.<ref>Strycharczuk, P., López-Ibáñez, M., Brown, G., & Leemann, A. (2020). "General Northern English. Exploring regional variation in the North of England with machine learning". Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 545883.</ref> Outside of England, namely in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts very little influence, particularly in the 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the [[British Empire]], is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP [[Comparison of General American and Received Pronunciation|notably contrasts]] with standard North American accents.

As of the 21st century, dictionaries such as the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', the ''[[Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English]]'', the ''[[Chambers Dictionary]]'', and the ''[[Collins Dictionary]]'' record actual [[Usage (language)|usage]] rather than attempting to [[Linguistic prescription|prescribe]] it.<ref name="courses.nus.edu.sg">{{cite web|url=https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/standardisation/c.htm|title=The Standardisation of English|website=courses.nus.edu.sg}}</ref> In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and [[neologisms]] are frequent.

===History of standardisation===
For historical reasons dating back to the rise of [[London]] in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and the [[East Midlands]] became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both [[Dialect levelling in Britain|dialect levelling]] and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of a lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence.<ref name="courses.nus.edu.sg"/> Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate.<ref name="thehistoryofenglish.com"/>

''[[Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language]]'' (1755) was a large step in the [[English-language spelling reform]], where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html|title=The History of English: Spelling and Standardization (Suzanne Kemmer)|website=ruf.rice.edu}}</ref> By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's ''[[Modern English Usage]]'' and ''[[The Complete Plain Words]]'' by [[Sir Ernest Gowers]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/new-edition-of-the-complete-plain-words-will-delight-fans-of-no-frills-prose-but-can-breaking-the-9219926.html|title=New edition of The Complete Plain Words will delight fans of no-frills|website=[[Independent.co.uk]]|date=27 March 2014}}</ref>

Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication is included in style guides issued by various publishers including ''[[The Times]]'' newspaper, the ''[[Oxford University Press]]'' and the ''[[Cambridge University Press]]''. ''The Oxford University Press'' guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as ''[[Hart's Rules]]'', and in 2002 as part of ''The Oxford Manual of Style''. Comparable in authority and stature to ''[[The Chicago Manual of Style]]'' for published [[American English]], the Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/University%20of%20Oxford%20Style%20Guide.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/University%20of%20Oxford%20Style%20Guide.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |work=[[University of Oxford]] |title=Style Guide |access-date=14 June 2019 }}</ref>