[sherer]

More and more these days I get the feeling that I don't live in Britain any more but just another part of America.

Every day I get a newspaper that has a mast head and every date written in the US Month Day format rather than Date, Month, Year format that we use in the UK. e.g July 26th instead of 26th July.

Now I know nearly all newspapers are made with US DTP software but surely it wouldn't be too hard to make sure that dates are written in the UK format. Somehow I think if the US had some English DTP software they wouldn't accept printing with dates written in our format

The government sponsored advert for the smoking ban, both in print and on TV all mention the ban comes in on July 1st instead of The First of July. We are now such a US state that even the government doesn't realise.

I've been reading on the BBC website usually the home of the establishment and Englishness about the first cash point machine. Even on there, talking about a British invention, they use the phrase ATM. Now i'm not sure what these machines are going to tell me, nor how they will do it automatically.

Every film post we get now also has the date written in US format, where as a few years ago they would convert it to the UK format e.g In cinemas 26th July rather than now we get In cinemas July 26th in their format even though they already have to change the post to put our format up.

More and more I come across more Americanisms but when they start being displayed in adverts and info clips from our own government surely things have gone too far