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Originally Posted by SlipshodDread
Perfectly good American English, I would fail my English A-Level if I wrote things like that.
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American English doesn't differ from British English in terms of grammar, only spelling and vocabulary. If your instructors are giving you a bad time for using "on" in that context, they're absurd. It's not an oxymoron at all; it's a shortened way of saying "I need to get off the bus on First Street." You're not getting off and on the same thing at the same time; you're getting off one thing and on another.
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Although to be fair, I fail if I use "z" instead of "s" in words such as "Americanisation". They're a tough crowd to please the English examiners
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Now that, on the other hand, is a real difference between the two dialects.
By the way, the reason why British and American English differ in spelling is because English spelling was not standardized by 1783. Spelling was standardized after American independence, in both countries, but -- independently. And so on this side of the pond we ended up spelling things differently than they did over there. Which means that in the English speaking world, we're the oddballs. Every other English speaking country remained part of the British Empire until after spelling was standardized and so uses British spelling.