american english essays

40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

40 best essays of all time (with links and writing tips), 1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra, writing tips from the essay:, 2. charles d’ambrosio – documents, 3. e. b. white – once more to the lake, 4. zadie smith – fail better, 5. virginia woolf – death of the moth, 6. meghan daum – my misspent youth.

Many of us, at some point or another, dream about living in New York. Meghan Daum’s take on the subject differs slightly from what you might expect. There’s no glamour, no Broadway shows, and no fancy restaurants. Instead, there’s the sullen reality of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. You’ll get all the juicy details about credit cards, overdue payments, and scrambling for survival. It’s a word of warning. But it’s also a great story about shattered fantasies of living in a big city. Word on the street is: “You ain’t promised mañana in the rotten manzana.”

7. Roger Ebert – Go Gentle Into That Good Night

8. george orwell – shooting an elephant.

Even after one reading, you’ll remember this one for years. The story, set in British Burma, is about shooting an elephant (it’s not for the squeamish). It’s also the most powerful denunciation of colonialism ever put into writing. Orwell, apparently a free representative of British rule, feels to be nothing more than a puppet succumbing to the whim of the mob.

9. George Orwell – A Hanging

10. christopher hitchens – assassins of the mind.

In one of the greatest essays written in defense of free speech, Christopher Hitchens shares many examples of how modern media kneel to the explicit threats of violence posed by Islamic extremists. He recounts the story of his friend, Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses who, for many years, had to watch over his shoulder because of the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini. With his usual wit, Hitchens shares various examples of people who died because of their opinions and of editors who refuse to publish anything related to Islam because of fear (and it was written long before the Charlie Hebdo massacre). After reading the essay, you realize that freedom of expression is one of the most precious things we have and that we have to fight for it. I highly recommend all essay collections penned by Hitchens, especially the ones written for Vanity Fair.

11. Christopher Hitchens – The New Commandments

12. phillip lopate – against joie de vivre.

While reading this fantastic essay, this quote from Slavoj Žižek kept coming back to me: “I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves”. I can bear the onus of happiness or joie de vivre for some time. But this force enables me to get free and wallow in the sweet feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. By reading this work of Lopate, you’ll enter into the world of an intelligent man who finds most social rituals a drag. It’s worth exploring.

13. Philip Larkin – The Pleasure Principle

14. sigmund freud – thoughts for the times on war and death.

This essay reveals Freud’s disillusionment with the whole project of Western civilization. How the peaceful European countries could engage in a war that would eventually cost over 17 million lives? What stirs people to kill each other? Is it their nature, or are they puppets of imperial forces with agendas of their own? From the perspective of time, this work by Freud doesn’t seem to be fully accurate. Even so, it’s well worth your time.

15. Zadie Smith – Some Notes on Attunement

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

My imagination was always stirred by the scene of the solar eclipse in Pharaoh, by Boleslaw Prus. I wondered about the shock of the disoriented crowd when they saw how their ruler could switch off the light. Getting immersed in this essay by Annie Dillard has a similar effect. It produces amazement and some kind of primeval fear. It’s not only the environment that changes; it’s your mind and the perception of the world. After the eclipse, nothing is going to be the same again.

17. Édouard Levé – When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue

This suicidally beautiful essay will teach you a lot about the appreciation of life and the struggle with mental illness. It’s a collection of personal, apparently unrelated thoughts that show us the rich interior of the author. You look at the real-time thoughts of another person, and then recognize the same patterns within yourself… It sounds like a confession of a person who’s about to take their life, and it’s striking in its originality.

18. Gloria E. Anzaldúa – How to Tame a Wild Tongue

19. kurt vonnegut – dispatch from a man without a country.

In terms of style, this essay is flawless. It’s simple, conversational, humorous, and yet, full of wisdom. And when Vonnegut becomes a teacher and draws an axis of “beginning – end”, and, “good fortune – bad fortune” to explain literature, it becomes outright hilarious. It’s hard to find an author with such a down-to-earth approach. He doesn’t need to get intellectual to prove a point. And the point could be summed up by the quote from Great Expectations – “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip – such is Life!”

20. Mary Ruefle – On Fear

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

In this highly intellectual essay, Sontag fights for art and its interpretation. It’s a great lesson, especially for critics and interpreters who endlessly chew on works that simply defy interpretation. Why don’t we just leave the art alone? I always hated it when at school they asked me: “What did the author have in mind when he did X or Y?” Iēsous Pantocrator! Hell if I know! I will judge it through my subjective experience!

22. Nora Ephron – A Few Words About Breasts

This is a heartwarming, coming-of-age story about a young girl who waits in vain for her breasts to grow. It’s simply a humorous and pleasurable read. The size of breasts is a big deal for women. If you’re a man, you may peek into the mind of a woman and learn many interesting things. If you’re a woman, maybe you’ll be able to relate and at last, be at peace with your bosom.

23. Carl Sagan – Does Truth Matter – Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization

24. paul graham – how to do what you love.

How To Do What You Love should be read by every college student and young adult. The Internet is flooded with a large number of articles and videos that are supposed to tell you what to do with your life. Most of them are worthless, but this one is different. It’s sincere, and there’s no hidden agenda behind it. There’s so much we take for granted – what we study, where we work, what we do in our free time… Surely we have another two hundred years to figure it out, right? Life’s too short to be so naïve. Please, read the essay and let it help you gain fulfillment from your work.

25. John Jeremiah Sullivan – Mister Lytle

A young, aspiring writer is about to become a nurse of a fading writer – Mister Lytle (Andrew Nelson Lytle), and there will be trouble. This essay by Sullivan is probably my favorite one from the whole list. The amount of beautiful sentences it contains is just overwhelming. But that’s just a part of its charm. It also takes you to the Old South which has an incredible atmosphere. It’s grim and tawny but you want to stay there for a while.

26. Joan Didion – On Self Respect

Normally, with that title, you would expect some straightforward advice about how to improve your character and get on with your goddamn life – but not from Joan Didion. From the very beginning, you can feel the depth of her thinking, and the unmistakable style of a true woman who’s been hurt. You can learn more from this essay than from whole books about self-improvement . It reminds me of the scene from True Detective, where Frank Semyon tells Ray Velcoro to “own it” after he realizes he killed the wrong man all these years ago. I guess we all have to “own it”, recognize our mistakes, and move forward sometimes.

27. Susan Sontag – Notes on Camp

I’ve never read anything so thorough and lucid about an artistic current. After reading this essay, you will know what camp is. But not only that – you will learn about so many artists you’ve never heard of. You will follow their traces and go to places where you’ve never been before. You will vastly increase your appreciation of art. It’s interesting how something written as a list could be so amazing. All the listicles we usually see on the web simply cannot compare with it.

28. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance

29. david foster wallace – consider the lobster.

When you want simple field notes about a food festival, you needn’t send there the formidable David Foster Wallace. He sees right through the hypocrisy and cruelty behind killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lobsters – by boiling them alive. This essay uncovers some of the worst traits of modern American people. There are no apologies or hedging one’s bets. There’s just plain truth that stabs you in the eye like a lobster claw. After reading this essay, you may reconsider the whole animal-eating business.

30. David Foster Wallace – The Nature of the Fun

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

This is not an essay per se, but I included it on the list for the sake of variety. It was delivered as a commencement speech at The University of Toronto, and it’s about keeping the right attitude. Soon after leaving university, most graduates have to forget about safety, parties, and travel and start a new life – one filled with a painful routine that will last until they drop. Atwood says that you don’t have to accept that. You can choose how you react to everything that happens to you (and you don’t have to stay in that dead-end job for the rest of your days).

32. Jo Ann Beard – The Fourth State of Matter

Read that one as soon as possible. It’s one of the most masterful and impactful essays you’ll ever read. It’s like a good horror – a slow build-up, and then your jaw drops to the ground. To summarize the story would be to spoil it, so I recommend that you just dig in and devour this essay in one sitting. It’s a perfect example of “show, don’t tell” writing, where the actions of characters are enough to create the right effect. No need for flowery adjectives here.

33. Terence McKenna – Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness

34. eudora welty – the little store.

By reading this little-known essay, you will be transported into the world of the old American South. It’s a remembrance of trips to the little store in a little town. It’s warm and straightforward, and when you read it, you feel like a child once more. All these beautiful memories live inside of us. They lay somewhere deep in our minds, hidden from sight. The work by Eudora Welty is an attempt to uncover some of them and let you get reacquainted with some smells and tastes of the past.

35. John McPhee – The Search for Marvin Gardens

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

A dead body at the bottom of the well makes for a beautiful literary device. The first line of Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name Is Red delivers it perfectly: “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well”. There’s something creepy about the idea of the well. Just think about the “It puts the lotion in the basket” scene from The Silence of the Lambs. In the first paragraph of Kingston’s essay, we learn about a suicide committed by uncommon means of jumping into the well. But this time it’s a real story. Who was this woman? Why did she do it? Read the essay.

37. Joan Didion – On Keeping A Notebook

38. joan didion – goodbye to all that, 39. george orwell – reflections on gandhi, 40. george orwell – politics and the english language, other essays you may find interesting, oliver sacks – on libraries.

One of the greatest contributors to the knowledge about the human mind, Oliver Sacks meditates on the value of libraries and his love of books.

Noam Chomsky – The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Sam harris – the riddle of the gun.

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Edward said – reflections on exile.

The life of Edward Said was a truly fascinating one. Born in Jerusalem, he lived between Palestine and Egypt and finally settled down in the United States, where he completed his most famous work – Orientalism. In this essay, he shares his thoughts about what it means to be in exile.

Richard Feynman – It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three…

Rabindranath tagore – the religion of the forest, richard dawkins – letter to his 10-year-old daughter.

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Koty neelis – 21 incredible life lessons from anthony bourdain.

I included it as the last one because it’s not really an essay, but I just had to put it somewhere. In this listicle, you’ll find the 21 most original thoughts of the high-profile cook, writer, and TV host, Anthony Bourdain. Some of them are shocking, others are funny, but they’re all worth checking out.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca – On the Shortness of Life

Bertrand russell – in praise of idleness, james baldwin – stranger in the village.

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The sense of style – by steven pinker, on writing well – by william zinsser, now immerse yourself in the world of essays, rafal reyzer.

Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

The best free cultural &

educational media on the web

• Online Courses
• Certificates
• Degrees & Mini-Degrees
• Audio Books

The Ten Best American Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan

in Books , Literature | November 15th, 2012 3 Comments

“Essays can be lots of things, maybe too many things,” writes Atwan in his fore­ward to the 2012 install­ment in the Best Amer­i­can series, “but at the core of the genre is an unmis­tak­able recep­tiv­i­ty to the ever-shift­ing process­es of our minds and moods. If there is any essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic we can attribute to the essay, it may be this: that the truest exam­ples of the form enact that ever-shift­ing process, and in that enact­ment we can find the basis for the essay’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be regard­ed seri­ous­ly as imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture and the essay­ist’s claim to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a cre­ative writer.”

In 2001 Atwan and Joyce Car­ol Oates took on the daunt­ing task of trac­ing that ever-shift­ing process through the pre­vi­ous 100 years for  The Best Amer­i­can Essays of the Cen­tu­ry . Recent­ly Atwan returned with a more focused selec­tion for  Pub­lish­ers Week­ly :  “The Top 10 Essays Since 1950.”  To pare it all down to such a small num­ber, Atwan decid­ed to reserve the “New Jour­nal­ism” cat­e­go­ry, with its many mem­o­rable works by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and oth­ers, for some future list. He also made a point of select­ing the best essays , as opposed to exam­ples from the best essay­ists. “A list of the top ten essay­ists since 1950 would fea­ture some dif­fer­ent writ­ers.”

We were inter­est­ed to see that six of the ten best essays are avail­able for free read­ing online. Here is Atwan’s list, along with links to those essays that are on the Web:

• James Bald­win, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955 (Read it here .)
• Nor­man Mail­er, “The White Negro,” 1957 (Read it here .)
• Susan Son­tag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 1964 (Read it here .)
• John McPhee, “The Search for Mar­vin Gar­dens,” 1972 (Read it here with a sub­scrip­tion.)
• Joan Did­ion, “The White Album,” 1979
• Annie Dil­lard, “Total Eclipse,” 1982
• Phillip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” 1986 (Read it here .)
• Edward Hoagland, “Heav­en and Nature,” 1988
• Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Mat­ter,” 1996 (Read it here .)
• David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster,” 2004 (Read it here  in a ver­sion dif­fer­ent from the one pub­lished in his 2005 book of the same name.)

“To my mind,” writes Atwan in his arti­cle, “the best essays are deeply per­son­al (that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demon­strate a mind in process–reflecting, try­ing-out, essay­ing.”

To read more of Atwan’s com­men­tary, see his  arti­cle in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly .

The pho­to above of Susan Son­tag was tak­en by Peter Hujar in 1966.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

by Mike Springer | Permalink | Comments (3) |

Related posts:

Comments (3), 3 comments so far.

Check out Michael Ven­tu­ra’s HEAR THAT LONG SNAKE MOAN: The VooDoo Ori­gins of Rock n’ Roll

Wow I think there’s oth­er greater ones out there. Just need to find them.

Boise mul­ber­ry bags uk http://www.cool-mulberrybags.info/

Add a comment

Leave a reply.

Name (required)

Email (required)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Click here to cancel reply.

• 1,700 Free Online Courses
• 200 Online Certificate Programs
• 100+ Online Degree & Mini-Degree Programs
• 1,150 Free Movies
• 1,000 Free Audio Books
• 150+ Best Podcasts
• 800 Free eBooks
• 200 Free Textbooks
• 300 Free Language Lessons
• 150 Free Business Courses
• Free K-12 Education
• Get Our Daily Email

Free Courses

• Art & Art History
• Classics/Ancient World
• Computer Science
• Data Science
• Engineering
• Environment
• Political Science
• Writing & Journalism
• All 1700 Free Courses

Receive our Daily Email

Free updates, get our daily email.

Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. We never spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

FOLLOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Free Movies

• 1150 Free Movies Online
• Free Film Noir
• Silent Films
• Documentaries
• Martial Arts/Kung Fu
• Free Hitchcock Films
• Free Charlie Chaplin
• Free John Wayne Movies
• Free Tarkovsky Films
• Free Dziga Vertov
• Free Oscar Winners
• Free Language Lessons
• All Languages

Free eBooks

• 700 Free eBooks
• Free Philosophy eBooks
• The Harvard Classics
• Philip K. Dick Stories
• Neil Gaiman Stories
• David Foster Wallace Stories & Essays
• Hemingway Stories
• Great Gatsby & Other Fitzgerald Novels
• HP Lovecraft
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Free Alice Munro Stories
• Jennifer Egan Stories
• George Saunders Stories
• Hunter S. Thompson Essays
• Joan Didion Essays
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez Stories
• David Sedaris Stories
• Stephen King
• Golden Age Comics
• Free Books by UC Press
• Life Changing Books

Free Audio Books

• 700 Free Audio Books
• Free Audio Books: Fiction
• Free Audio Books: Poetry
• Free Audio Books: Non-Fiction

Free Textbooks

• Free Physics Textbooks
• Free Computer Science Textbooks
• Free Math Textbooks

K-12 Resources

• Free Video Lessons
• Web Resources by Subject
• Quality YouTube Channels
• Teacher Resources
• All Free Kids Resources

Free Art & Images

• All Art Images & Books
• The Rijksmuseum
• Smithsonian
• The Guggenheim
• The National Gallery
• The Whitney
• LA County Museum
• Stanford University
• British Library
• Google Art Project
• French Revolution
• Getty Images
• Guggenheim Art Books
• Met Art Books
• Getty Art Books
• New York Public Library Maps
• Museum of New Zealand
• Smarthistory
• Coloring Books
• All Bach Organ Works
• All of Bach
• 80,000 Classical Music Scores
• Free Classical Music
• Live Classical Music
• 9,000 Grateful Dead Concerts
• Alan Lomax Blues & Folk Archive

Writing Tips

• William Zinsser
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Toni Morrison
• Margaret Atwood
• David Ogilvy
• Billy Wilder
• All posts by date

Personal Finance

• Open Personal Finance
• Amazon Kindle
• Architecture
• Artificial Intelligence
• Comics/Cartoons
• Current Affairs
• English Language
• Entrepreneurship
• Food & Drink
• Graduation Speech
• How to Learn for Free
• Internet Archive
• Language Lessons
• Most Popular
• Neuroscience
• Photography
• Pretty Much Pop
• Productivity
• UC Berkeley
• Uncategorized
• Video - Arts & Culture
• Video - Politics/Society
• Video - Science
• Video Games

Great Lectures

• Michel Foucault
• Sun Ra at UC Berkeley
• Richard Feynman
• Joseph Campbell
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Leonard Bernstein
• Richard Dawkins
• Buckminster Fuller
• Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism
• Jacques Lacan
• Roland Barthes
• Nobel Lectures by Writers
• Bertrand Russell
• Oxford Philosophy Lectures

Sign up for Newsletter

Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

Great Recordings

• T.S. Eliot Reads Waste Land
• Sylvia Plath - Ariel
• Joyce Reads Ulysses
• Joyce - Finnegans Wake
• Patti Smith Reads Virginia Woolf
• Albert Einstein
• Charles Bukowski
• Bill Murray
• Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare
• William Faulkner
• Flannery O'Connor
• Tolkien - The Hobbit
• Allen Ginsberg - Howl
• Dylan Thomas
• Anne Sexton
• John Cheever
• David Foster Wallace

Book Lists By

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Allen Ginsberg
• Patti Smith
• Henry Miller
• Christopher Hitchens
• Joseph Brodsky
• Donald Barthelme
• David Bowie
• Samuel Beckett
• Art Garfunkel
• Marilyn Monroe
• Picks by Female Creatives
• Zadie Smith & Gary Shteyngart
• Lynda Barry

Favorite Movies

• Kurosawa's 100
• David Lynch
• Werner Herzog
• Woody Allen
• Wes Anderson
• Luis Buñuel
• Roger Ebert
• Susan Sontag
• Scorsese Foreign Films
• Philosophy Films
• October 2024
• September 2024
• August 2024
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006

©2006-2024 Open Culture, LLC. All rights reserved.

• Advertise with Us
• Copyright Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use

The Best American Essays 2022

by Alexander Chee, Robert Atwan

• On Sale: 11/01/2022

Price: $17.99

Trade PB Digital Audiobook Unabridged EPUB

Format: Trade PB Digital Audiobook Unabridged EPUB

• Book Overview
• Author Info

About the Book

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” ( Washington Post ), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

Critical Praise

“ New Yorker  writer Schulz ( Being Wrong ) collects essays that skillfully combine journalistic and literary sensibilities in this powerful addition to the annual anthology series… This is a moving retrospective of a singular year.” — Publishers Weekly on The Best American Essays 2021

“These essays challenge personal and political assumptions and show us life in all its complexities and contradictions. Which in this American moment, and in every other, matters.” — USA Today

“[A] thoughtful entry in the long-running series...The works in this year’s collection are a mix of the disconcerting, the probing, and the self-reflective, and well-suited to challenging times.” — Publishers Weekly

Product Details

• ISBN: 9780358658870
• ISBN 10: 035865887X
• Imprint: Mariner Books
• Trimsize: 5.500 in (w) x 8.250 in (h) x 0.000 in (d)
• List Price: $17.99
• BISAC1 : LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing / Nonfiction (incl. Memoirs)
• BISAC2 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General
• BISAC3 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays

Alexander Chee

ALEXANDER CHEE is the best-selling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel . He is a contributing editor at the New Republic , and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review . His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 , the New York Times Magazine , the New York Times Book Review , the New Yorker , T Magazine,   Slate , Vulture , among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.

Robert Atwan

ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• The Lit Hub Podcast
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• I’m a Writer But
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• Behind the Mic
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• Emergence Magazine
• The History of Literature
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

What Makes a Great American Essay?

Talking to phillip lopate about thwarted expectations, emerson, and the 21st-century essay boom.

Phillip Lopate spoke to Literary Hub about the new anthology he has edited, The Glorious American Essay . He recounts his own development from an “unpatriotic” young man to someone, later in life, who would embrace such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who personified the simultaneous darkness and optimism underlying the history of the United States. Lopate looks back to the Puritans and forward to writers like Wesley Yang and Jia Tolentino. What is the next face of the essay form?

Literary Hub: We’re at a point, politically speaking, when disagreements about the meaning of the word “American” are particularly vehement. What does the term mean to you in 2020? How has your understanding of the word evolved?

Phillip Lopate : First of all, I am fully aware that even using the word “American” to refer only to the United States is something of an insult to Latin American countries, and if I had said “North American” to signify the US, that might have offended Canadians. Still, I went ahead and put “American” in the title as a synonym for the United States, because I wanted to invoke that powerful positive myth of America as an idea, a democratic aspiration for the world, as well as an imperialist juggernaut replete with many unresolved social inequities, in negative terms.

I will admit that when I was younger, I tended to be very unpatriotic and critical of my country, although once I started to travel abroad and witness authoritarian regimes like Spain under Franco, I could never sign on to the fear that a fascist US was just around the corner.  I came to the conclusion that we have our faults, but our virtues as well.

The more I’ve become interested in American history, the more I’ve seen how today’s problems and possible solutions are nothing new, but keep returning in cycles: economic booms and recessions, anti-immigrant sentiment, regional competition, racist Jim Crow policies followed by human rights advances, vigorous federal regulations and pendulum swings away from governmental intervention.

Part of the thrill in putting together this anthology was to see it operating simultaneously on two tracks: first, it would record the development of a literary form that I loved, the essay, as it evolved over 400 years in this country. At the same time, it would be a running account of the history of the United States, in the hands of these essayists who were contending, directly or indirectly, with the pressing problems of their day. The promise of America was always being weighed against its failure to live up to that standard.

For instance, we have the educator John Dewey arguing for a more democratic schoolhouse, the founder of the settlement house movement Jane Addams analyzing the alienation of young people in big cities, the progressive writer Randolph Bourne describing his own harsh experiences as a disabled person, the feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton advocating for women’s rights, and W. E. B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson eloquently addressing racial injustice.

Issues of identity, gender and intersectionality were explored by writers such as Richard Rodriguez, Audre Lorde, Leonard Michaels and N. Scott Momaday, sometimes with touches of irony and self-scrutiny, which have always been assets of the essay form.

LH : If a publisher had asked us to compile an anthology of 100 representative American essays, we wouldn’t know where to start. How did you? What were your criteria?

PL : I thought I knew the field fairly well to begin with, having edited the best-selling Art of the Personal Essay in 1994, taught the form for decades, served on book award juries and so on. But once I started researching and collecting material, I discovered that I had lots of gaps, partly because the mandate I had set for myself was so sweeping.

This time I would not restrict myself to personal essays but would include critical essays, impersonal essays, speeches that were in essence essays (such as George Washington’s Farewell Address or Martin Luther King, Jr’s sermon on Vietnam), letters that functioned as essays (Frederick Douglass’s Letter to His Master).

I wanted to expand the notion of what is  an essay, to include, for instance, polemics such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense , or one of the Federalist Papers; newspaper columnists (Fanny Fern, Christopher Morley); humorists (James Thurber, Finley Peter Dunne, Dorothy Parker).

But it also occurred to me that fine essayists must exist in every discipline, not only literature, which sent me on a hunt that took me to cultural criticism (Clement Greenberg, Kenneth Burke), theology (Paul Tillich), food writing (M.F. K. Fisher), geography (John Brinkerhoff Jackson), nature writing (John Muir, John Burroughs, Edward Abbey), science writing (Loren Eiseley, Lewis Thomas), philosophy (George Santayana). My one consistent criterion was that the essay be lively, engaging and intelligently written. In short, I had to like it myself.

Of course I would need to include the best-known practitioners of the American essay—Emerson, Thoreau, Mencken, Baldwin, Sontag, etc.—and was happy to do so.  As it turned out, most of the masters of American fiction and poetry also tried their hand successfully at essay-writing, which meant including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison. . .

But I was also eager to uncover powerful if almost forgotten voices such as John Jay Chapman, Agnes Repplier, Randolph Bourne, Mary Austin, or buried treasures such as William Dean Howells’ memoir essay of his days working in his father’s printing shop.

Finally, I wanted to show a wide variety of formal approaches, since the essay is by its very nature and nomenclature an experiment, which brought me to Gertrude Stein and Wayne Koestenbaum. Equally important, I was aided in all these searches by colleagues and friends who kept suggesting other names. For every fertile lead, probably four resulted in dead ends.  Meanwhile, I was having a real learning adventure.

LH: Do you have a personal favorite among American essayists? If so, what appeals to you the most about them?

PL : I do. It’s Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was the one who cleared the ground for US essayists, in his famous piece, “The American Scholar,” which called on us to free ourselves from slavish imitation of European models and to think for ourselves.  So much American thought grows out of Emerson, or is in contention with Emerson, even if that debt is sometimes unacknowledged or unconscious.

What I love about Emerson is his density of thought, and the surprising twists and turns that result from it. I can read an essay of his like “Experience” (the one I included in this anthology) a hundred times and never know where it’s going next.  If it was said of Emily Dickenson that her poems made you feel like the top of your head was spinning, that’s what I feel in reading Emerson. He has a playful skepticism, a knack for thinking against himself.  Each sentence starts a new rabbit of thought scampering off. He’s difficult but worth the trouble.

I once asked Susan Sontag who her favorite American essayist was, and she replied “Emerson, of course.” It’s no surprise that Nietzsche revered Emerson, as did Carlyle, and in our own time, Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, Richard Poirier. But here’s a confession: it took me awhile to come around to him.

I found his preacher’s manner and abstractions initially off-putting, I wasn’t sure about the character of the man who was speaking to me. Then I read his Notebooks and the mystery was cracked: suddenly I was able to follow essays such as “Circles” with pure pleasure, seeing as I could the darkness and complexity underneath the optimism.

LH: You make the interesting decision to open the anthology with an essay written in 1726, 50 years before the founding of the republic. Why?

PL : I wanted to start the anthology with the first fully-formed essayistic voices in this land, which turned out to belong to the Puritans. Regardless of the negative associations of zealous prudishness that have come to attach to the adjective “puritanical,” those American colonies founded as religious settlements were spearheaded by some remarkably learned and articulate spokespersons, whose robust prose enriched the American literary canon.

Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards were highly cultivated readers, familiar with the traditions of essay-writing, Montaigne and the English, and with the latest science, even as they inveighed against witchcraft. I will admit that it also amused me to open the book with Cotton Mather, a prescriptive, strait-is-the-gate character, and end it with Zadie Smith, who is not only bi-racial but bi-national, dividing her year between London and New York, and whose openness to self-doubt is signaled by her essay collection title, Changing My Mind .

The next group of writers I focused on were the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and a foundational feminist, Judith Sargent Murray, who wrote the 1790 essay “On the Equality of the Sexes.” These authors, whose essays preceded, occurred during or immediately followed the founding of the republic, were in some ways the opposite of the Puritans, being for the most part Deists or secular followers of the Enlightenment.

Their attraction to reasoned argument and willingness to entertain possible objections to their points of view inspired a vigorous strand of American essay-writing. So, while we may fix the founding of the United States to a specific year, the actual culture and literature of the country book-ended that date.

LH: You end with Zadie Smith’s “Speaking in Tongues,” published in 2008. Which essay in the last 12 years would be your 101st selection?

PL : Funny you should ask. As it happens, I am currently putting the finishing touches on another anthology, this one entirely devoted to the Contemporary (i.e., 21st century) American Essay. I have been immersed in reading younger, up-and-coming writers, established mid-career writers, and some oldsters who are still going strong (Janet Malcolm, Vivian Gornick, Barry Lopez, John McPhee, for example).

It would be impossible for me to single out any one contemporary essayist, as they are all in different ways contributing to the stew, but just to name some I’ve been tracking recently: Meghan Daum, Maggie Nelson, Sloane Crosley, Eula Biss, Charles D’Ambrosio, Teju Cole, Lia Purpura, John D’Agata, Samantha Irby, Anne Carson, Alexander Chee, Aleksander Hemon, Hilton Als, Mary Cappello, Bernard Cooper, Leslie Jamison, Laura Kipnis, Rivka Galchen, Emily Fox Gordon, Darryl Pinckney, Yiyun Li, David Lazar, Lynn Freed, Ander Monson, David Shields, Rebecca Solnit, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Eileen Myles, Amy Tan, Jonathan Lethem, Chelsea Hodson, Ross Gay, Jia Tolentino, Jenny Boully, Durga Chew-Bose, Brian Blanchfield, Thomas Beller, Terry Castle, Wesley Yang, Floyd Skloot, David Sedaris. . .

Such a banquet of names speaks to the intergenerational appeal of the form. We’re going through a particularly rich time for American essays: especially compared to, 20 years ago, when editors wouldn’t even dare put the word “essays” on the cover, but kept trying to package these variegated assortments as single-theme discourses, we’ve seen many collections that have been commercially successful and attracted considerable critical attention.

It has something to do with the current moment, which has everyone more than a little confused and therefore trusting more than ever those strong individual voices that are willing to cop to their subjective fears, anxieties, doubts and ecstasies.

__________________________________

The Glorious American Essay , edited by Phillip Lopate, is available now.

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Phillip Lopate

Previous article, next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Recent History: Lessons From Obama, Both Cautionary and Hopeful

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

• Humanities ›
• English Grammar ›

Edited American English (EAE)

Hill Street Studios / Getty Images

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Edited American English is a variety of Standard American English used in most forms of  academic writing . It is also called Standard Written English (SWE).

"Edited" English commonly refers to writing that has been prepared for publication in print (in contrast to online writing ).

The Brown University Corpus of Edited American English (BUC) contains approximately one million words of "present-day edited American English." Excluded from this corpus are any forms of spoken English as well as words found in verse, drama, and scientific writing.

• " Edited American English is the version of our language that has come to be the standard for written public discourse —for newspapers and books and for most of the writing you do in school and on the job... Where did this description of Edited American English come from? It is the work through the years of many grammarians , many authors of textbooks and dictionaries , many editors who have taken it upon themselves to describe —and sometimes to prescribe —the version of English used by the influential writers and speakers of their day. Those writers and speakers don't say 'I don't have no money' and 'He don't like me' and 'I ain't going'—at least not in their public discourse. They say 'I don't have any money' and 'He doesn't like me' and 'I'm not going,' so those forms are the ones that get included in the grammar books and usage manuals as the standard." (Martha Kolln and Robert Funk, Understanding English Grammar , 5th ed. Allyn and Bacon, 1998)
• "For college students, Edited American English consists of the language used in formal written documents, for example, in course essays, assignments, and term papers. The rigorous editing required for those tasks is not as necessary in more informal writing , such as journal entries, freewriting , blogs, and first drafts ." (Ann Raimes and Susan Miller-Cochran, Keys for Writers , 7th ed. Wadsworth, Cengage, 2014)

Examples of Usage in EAE: Singulars and Plurals​

" Edited American English and most conservative American commentary insist that the singular nouns kind, manner, sort, type, style , and way must be modified by singular demonstratives ( this/that kind or manner or sort or style or way) and that normally each will be followed by an of phrase with a singular object ( this kind of dog, that manner of chatter, that sort of dilemma, this type of book, this way of writing ). Further, these same conservative American standards insist that when kind, manner, sort, type, way , and the like are plural , then the preceding demonstratives and any count nouns serving as objects of the following prepositions must also be plural: these kinds of studies, those sorts of poems, these types of airplanes . But when the following objects of the preposition are mass nouns , they may be singular, as in those sorts of gravel, those types of sand, these ways of thinking . Whatever the American Edited English standards demand, however, British English and American Conversational and Informal uses clearly display a full range of combinations of singulars and plurals..." ( The Columbia Guide to Standard American English . Columbia University Press, 1993)

• Standard American English (SAE)
• Definition and Examples of Linguistic Americanization
• Definition and Examples of Lexicography
• Americanism in Language
• lexicographer
• The Distinctive Characteristics of Canadian English
• What Is American English (AmE)?
• Definition and Examples of Science Writing
• What Signifying Means in African American Discourse
• Globish Language Definition and Examples
• Using Dependant vs. Dependent
• Top 10 Reference Works for Writers and Editors
• What Is a Syllable in the English Language?
• What Is Aphesis?
• Definition and Examples of Psychological Verbs
• English As an Additional Language (EAL)

Sample Essays

The breadth of Georgetown’s core curriculum means that students are required to write for a wide variety of academic disciplines. Below, we provide some student samples that exhibit the key features the most popular genres. When reading through these essays, we recommend paying attention to their 

1. Structure (How many paragraphs are there? Does the author use headers?) 

2. Argument (Is the author pointing out a problem, and/or proposing a solution?) 

3. Content (Does the argument principally rely on facts, theory, or logic?) and 

4. Style (Does the writer use first person? What is the relationship with the audience?)

Philosophy Paper

• Singer on the Moral Status of Animals

Theology Paper

• Problem of God
• Jewish Civilization
• Sacred Space and Time
• Phenolphthalein in Alkaline Solution

History Paper

• World History

Literature Review

Comparative Analysis 

Policy Brief

• Vaccine Manufacturing

White Paper

Critical Analysis

• Ignatius Seminar

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• UK vs. US English

UK vs. US English | Difference, Spelling & Examples

When writing your dissertation , research paper or essay, you will have to consistently follow the conventions of a specific style of English. The most commonly used forms are:

• American English
• British English
• Australian English

Although these dialects follow many of the same rules, they also have some important differences in spelling , punctuation and word choice .

Check US or UK English for free

Fix mistakes for free

Table of contents

Us vs. uk spelling, us vs. uk punctuation, us vs. uk verb conjugation, us vs. uk abbreviations, consistency is key, why is it so complicated.

As the table below shows, the difference between UK and US spelling usually relates to just one or two letters.

The following cheat sheet outlines the preferred spelling of some words that are commonly used in academic writing .

Check US or UK English

Use the best grammar checker available to check that you're writing consistently in one variant of English.

The main punctuation differences relate to single and double quotation marks and where to place other punctuation in relation to quotations.

There are some differences in subject-verb agreement with collective nouns  (nouns referring to a group of individual things as a unified whole) and in past tense verb forms .

There is also disagreement over how to use periods in abbreviations .

Most importantly, each individual word must be spelled the same throughout your document. However, it’s also best to avoid mixing US English and UK English .

• The defense minister first travelled  to China in 2013.
• The defense minister first traveled to China in 2013.
• The defence minister first travelled to China in 2013.

In addition, the same spelling should generally be used for all forms of a word.

• The organization is headquartered in Osaka, but it usually organises workshops in Tokyo.
• The organization is headquartered in Osaka, but it usually organizes workshops in Tokyo.
• The organisation is headquartered in Osaka, but it usually organises workshops in Tokyo.

If you use our proofreading and editing service , you can request a specific style of English (US or UK).

After winning their independence from the British, Americans used language as a way to create their own identity. This led to many variations in spelling and punctuation, among other things. Australia also developed its own written conventions, which lie somewhere between those of the US and the UK (although they tend to be more British).

Of the three, Australian English is generally the most flexible, and US English is the least flexible. Bear in mind that the rules are not always very firm: there are many exceptions, and the preferred conventions are constantly changing.

Is this article helpful?

Other students also liked.

• Toward or Towards | Definition, Difference & Examples

Avoid informal writing

Advice vs. advise | meaning, definition & examples, more interesting articles.

• Behaviour or Behavior | Meaning, Spelling & Examples
• Burned or Burnt | Meaning, Difference & Examples
• Cancelled or Canceled | Difference & Examples
• Color vs. Colour | Meaning, Spelling & Example Sentences
• Defence vs. Defense | Difference & Example Sentences
• Dreamt or Dreamed | Definition, Difference & Example Sentences
• Favor or Favour | Meaning, Spelling, & Examples
• Favourite or Favorite | Meaning, Spelling & Examples
• Fulfil or Fulfill | Difference & Example Sentences
• Gray or Grey | Difference & Example Sentences
• Honor or Honour | Meaning, Spelling & Examples
• Humor or Humour | Meaning, Spelling & Examples
• Judgment or Judgement l Difference & Examples
• Kneeled or Knelt | Meaning, Difference & Examples
• Labelled or Labeled | Difference & Examples
• Labor vs. Labour | Definition, Spelling & Examples
• Learnt vs. Learned | Difference & Example Sentences
• Modelling vs. Modeling | Meaning, Spelling & Examples
• Offence vs. Offense | Difference & Example Sentences
• Organisation vs. Organization | Definition & Examples
• Practice vs. Practise | Definition, Difference & Examples
• Realise or Realize | Difference & Example Sentences
• Smelled or Smelt | Meaning, Difference & Examples
• Spelt or Spelled | Meaning, Difference & Examples
• Theatre vs. Theater | Meaning, Spelling & Examples
• Travelling or Traveling | Difference & Example Sentences

Get unlimited documents corrected

✔ Free APA citation check included ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

The Ultimate Guide To Writing In British English vs American English

Eloise McInerney

With a PhD in Languages, Literature & Cultural Studies, Eloise has a long background in language teaching which she brings to her work as an editor. When not poring over the words of others, she’s working on her epic fantasy novel, kicking bags at the gym, or roaming the beaches, hills and forests with her dog.

When it comes to British English vs American English, it has been said that we are “two countries divided by a common language.”

If you’re a writer or editor in the increasingly globalized digital market, you’ve probably encountered this divide firsthand in the job hunt. More contracts are certainly available for those who can use both of these common variants of English—but are you confident enough to expand your writing into a less familiar version of English?

Don't worry, it's easier than it seems. Though the differences between American and British English can be finicky, they follow distinct patterns.

In our ultimate guide, we cover spelling, common usage variants, and punctuation differences to help you write fluently in either variant of English and snag those extra contracts.

British vs American English: Historical Origins

English linguistic history goes back to before the 12th century. Back then, residents of what is now the UK used a combination of Germanic languages (which we consider the roots of modern English), early French, and Latin. Spelling and grammar weren’t standardized, and words with similar Latin roots might be spelled either the French way or the Latin way.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, influential dictionaries helped orchestrate the standardization of the English language. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first widely used British dictionary. Johnson preferred spellings based on a word’s roots, favoring French spelling , since, as he wrote , “the French generally supplied us.” Standard British spelling still follows this course.

Noah Webster, whose famous dictionary was published in 1828, tended to choose spellings based on common use and pronunciation rather than history, setting the trend for American spellings.

Now that we’ve seen how these regional variants were born, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty differences between American and British English so you can nail those overseas job proposals.

American vs British English: Usage and Vocabulary

It’s been suggested that when you pit British English vs American English, differences in vocabulary are focused around three areas: clothing, food, and transportation. It certainly seems that our terms for these common items are wildly different.

Here’s a quick chart so you don’t get caught out wondering what “boot” means in American English... or vice-versa.

American vs British English: Food

American vs British English: Outdoors

American vs British English: Clothing & fashion

American vs British English: Everyday home items ‍ ‍

Spelling Differences between British and American English

The common spelling differences between British and American English fall into these easy-to-recognize patterns. Still, there are always exceptions (this is English, after all), so keep a dictionary or style guide at hand.

-Or vs -our

American writers have mainly dropped the U in words with this ending. However, both variants may be acceptable on either side of the pond for some words.

• AmE behavior /BrE behaviour
• AmE color /BrE colour ‍
• In words where the ou sound is pronounced differently than an O sound, the ou spelling is standard to both regions: contour , troubadour
• In derivatives and inflected versions of these words in British English (that is, words where letters have been added or changed to denote different attributes or tenses), the U is not always kept: for instance, honour is BrE standard, but honorary drops the U .
• Cardinal numbers four and fourteen are always spelled with U .

-Ize vs -ise

The - ize spelling comes from Greek, while - ise is the French spelling. In American English - ize is the preferred form, while British spelling typically uses - ise , although style guides in Britain have more variance in their preferences. This applies to forms of the word other than the root word also. ‍ ‍

• AmE organize , organizing /BrE organise , organising
• AmE colonize, colonization/BrE colonise, colonisation

Exceptions ‍

• Words that do not come from a Greek root or do not use - ze /- se as a suffix are standard in English everywhere: advertise , seize , guise , capsize , franchise , demise , enterprise

-Yze vs -yse

This one is a bit simpler. In verbs, the British form is - yse while the American form is - yze . The spelling is followed in all forms of the verb. ‍

• AmE analyze , analyzing /BrE analyse , analysing
• AmE paralyze , paralyzed /BrE paralyse , paralysed

If a word ends in - re rather than - er , it’s the British spelling. However, even in British English, many words that end in this sound use - er . Generally - re is only used for the root versions of nouns; when this sound is used as a suffix (nic er , bigg er ) it always gets - er . Consult a dictionary if you’re unsure.

In the US, unless you are quoting the name of a fancy arts venue with an anachronistic spelling, it’s safe to assume - er is correct.

• AmE center /BrE centre
• AmE specter /BrE spectre
• AmE fiber /BrE fibre
• Words borrowed as-is from another language (such as French) retain their - re spelling in both UK and US English: genre , double entendre
• Words with Germanic roots, such as fire , anger , mother , danger , chapter , monster , member , and disaster, are typically consistent in both regions.
• Words made from the Greek suffix “meter” (for a measuring instrument) are always spelled - er : thermometer , barometer

While the British generally prefer the S when it comes to suffixes, for these words, they turn to a C , while Americans use an S.

• AmE defense /BrE defence
• AmE offense /BrE offence
• AmE pretense /BrE pretence
• Derivatives of the above words typically use the S in both regions: defensive , offensive , pretension
• In certain terms, the C denotes a noun form while the S denotes a verb form in both regions: Noun advice /verb advise , Noun device /verb devise ‍
• For other terms, that distinction is kept in British English but not in the US: BrE noun licence /verb license ; AmE license for both, BrE noun practice /verb practise ; AmE practice for both

Adding suffixes after the letter L

When adding one of the suffixes - ing , - ed , - er , - est , or - or , if the letter in front of the suffix is an L , British English typically doubles the L , while American English does not. However, watch out for exceptions.

• travel > BrE travelling /AmE traveling
• counsel > BrE counsellor /AmE counselor
• cruel > BrE cruellest /AmE cruelest
• Controlled and controlling are the same in both variants.

It gets trickier. When adding one of several other suffixes after an L , including - ful , - dom , and - ment , American English doubles the L , while British English does not.

• fulfill > BrE fulfilment /AmE fulfillment
• Words that are standard to both versions include till > until , null > annul
• British English prefers the root words instil , distil , and enrol over the American instill , distill , and enroll .

For other suffixes (e.g. - ous , - ize /- ise ) following an L , there is generally not a one-size-fits-all rule, so don’t close that dictionary!

Adding suffixes to words that end in E

For words that end in E , when adding a suffix such as - ing , -able , or - ism , American English sometimes drops the E as it is not pronounced, whereas British English typically will keep the E as a silent letter.

• Age > BrE ageing /AmE aging
• Like > BrE likeable /AmE likable
• Both sides of the pond typically use lunging , lovable , cringing , curable , and breathable.

Loss of vowel combinations/ligatures

Certain English words with roots from Greek and Latin, often medical terms, have been historically spelled with two vowels together to indicate what used to be a ligature (generally, a typeface that combines the two vowels into one character, e.g. ӕ or œ .) In British English, the combined vowels, either ae or oe , are kept, while in the US, only the E is kept. ‍

• BrE anaemia /AmE anemia
• BrE aeon /AmE eon
• BrE oestrogen /AmE estrogen
• Words that can be spelled both ways in US English: aesthetics/esthetics , archaeology/archeology , amoeba/ameba
• Words that can be spelled both ways in British English: encyclopaedia/encyclopedia , chamaeleon/chameleon , mediaeval/medieval

This is chiefly a word ending you’ll find in British prepositions and adverbs. Of course, Americans may use these terms in informal writing if they enjoy their unmistakable flavor. ‍

• AmE among /BrE amongst
• AmE while /BrE whilst

-T instead of -ed for past tense

For certain verbs, the British use - t to denote the past tense, while Americans typically use - ed . However, in American English, both variants are still often seen.

• leap > BrE leapt /AmE leaped
• burn > BrE burnt ( burned an acceptable variant)/AmE burned
• Among others, sleep > slept and sweep > swept are always standard.

-Og vs -ogue

Once again, the British generally use more letters, using - ogue where Americans use - og .

• AmE catalog /BrE catalogue
• AmE analog /BrE analogue
• While both forms of these words are accepted, dialogue , synagogue , and demagogue are the preferred spellings in the US.

Exceptions to the spelling rules

Of course, it wouldn’t be English without some spellings that don’t seem to follow any specific rule. Here’s a quick chart of some more unusual British and American English spelling differences.

Grammar differences between British and American English

Don’t think it’s all about spelling. Some differences have to do more with punctuation. Our comprehensive guide has you covered.

Single quotation marks vs double quotation marks

In general, while American writers prefer “double quotation marks” for dialogue, quotations, irony, and other purposes in a sentence, British writers use ‘single quotation marks.’

However, some British style guides do use double-quotation marks, so be sure to follow any specific instructions you are given.

If you’ve got quotes within quotes—say, a character quoting another within dialogue—the quotation mark styling for the inner marks is reversed.

British vs American English: Does punctuation go inside or outside the quotation marks?

American English puts two punctuation marks inside the quotation marks at all times: the period (full stop in BrE) and the comma. Colons and semicolons always go outside the quotes.

The em dash, the question mark, the exclamation mark, and the ellipsis typically go outside the quotes, unless they belong specifically to the quoted material.

British grammar is similar to US grammar in that it also puts the colon and the semicolon outside the quotation marks at all times. However, all other punctuation goes outside the quotation marks as well, unless it belongs to the quoted material and not the whole sentence.

In British English, in dialogue (that is, quoting from speech, real or fictional, rather than from another text), periods and commas typically go inside the quotation marks, as they indicate the tone of the speech and therefore belong with it.

Still confused? When it comes down to it, most punctuation marks are actually used the same way. The differences you should watch out for are in commas and periods. When these belong to a quote, as in dialogue or a full sentence from an original text, they’ll be inside the quotation marks in both variants.

When they are added to indicate punctuation in the new sentence, rather than the original quote, differences are as below.

Oxford/serial commas

The Oxford comma, or serial comma, comes after the final item in a list, before the word “and.”

It’s easy to remember which version of English uses the Oxford comma as long as you reverse what you’d expect: the English of Britain, home to Oxford University Press, tends not to use the Oxford comma. Meanwhile, in the US, the Oxford comma is more common.

Plural versus singular for groups

When referring to an entity composed of a number of individuals—such as a company or a band—an American would likely refer to the group as singular, while a British person would probably write about them as plural.

How can I learn to write American English—or vice versa?

Now that we’ve gone through the labyrinth of differences between British and American English, do you feel ready to take on a copywriting job anywhere in the world? If you’re determined to write like you’re on the other side of the pond, here are our five best tips for learning to write British English or American English.

1. Read the style you want to write.

The best tools writers and editors have are often their brains—and lots of repetition. After all, this is how we all learned English in the first place! Find books, magazines, and news media from reputable organizations in the version of English you want to write. Read often about a range of subjects, and you’ll begin to pick up on the variations naturally.

2. Avoid inconsistency!

The most important thing when writing is simply to choose one spelling/usage and stick with it. If you write “theatre” once, then make sure you always write “theatre.” Reader and editor preferences vary, but inconsistency always looks unprofessional.

It may be easiest to choose a major style guide to follow. (E.g., Chicago Manual of Style for American English or Oxford Style for British English.) Buy its official reference book and you’ll have all the info you need, though be warned that these can be quite dense.

Make yourself a style sheet and write down the required or preferred spelling every time you learn a new term. These can get long, so organize (organise) your style sheet so it doesn’t become completely unreadable.

3. Use your spellcheck to its full capacity.

If you’re writing in an unfamiliar dialect, spellcheck is your best friend. But make sure to double-check the language it’s checking—if you’re trying to write in British English and it’s set to American, you will have no end of woes.

Remember that this goes for the default autocorrect settings on your communications platforms and cloud documents, too.

If your word processor of choice doesn’t have a built-in spellcheck, try using an add-on such as Grammarly.

Most spellcheck programs enable you to customize your dictionary, so if you notice a word that you often get incorrect, you can add it to the program’s directories manually and never worry about it again.

4. Just look it up!

If you’re uncertain about a term, don’t guess: look it up!

Editing isn’t just about knowing what’s right; it’s about anticipating what might be wrong. Learn the signs that suggest a term might have an American or British variant—if you see an - ise or - ize spelling, for instance—and look those terms up at first rather than relying on memory.

Once you’ve learned a new term, add it to your style sheet. Choose one dictionary as your reference and stick with it, as there is some variance between dictionaries.

You may have to check often, but with repetition, most of these decisions will become second nature.

5. Ask a native speaker.

Many of us know somebody who either grew up in another country or continent or is living there now. If you have a friend who’s a native speaker of the variant you want to learn, ask them to scan your prose for anything that looks “off.” There’s no better resource than someone who’s been using a dialect their entire life.

If you don’t know anyone who speaks the variant personally, asking language questions on forums like Reddit and StackExchange could be useful. Or, if you can afford it, hire an editor who’s a native speaker. ‍

There you have it—the ultimate guide to the differences between American and British English. There are plenty more details to learn if you’re keen, but this will get you through the day-to-day.

Of course, if you’re still unsure whether you’ll get your target audience’s variant right, or if you don’t want to spend hours programming spellcheck, Eleven’s team of professional copywriters includes native English speakers from both sides of the pond, and we are ready to help.

Happy writing!

Receive insider tips straight to your inbox.

Would you like to speak to one of our experts?

Create custom email campaigns, measure performance, and turn insights into results with Mailchimp’s email marketing tools.

The latest from the Eleven blog

From writing and editing to strategy and marketing, our expert team answers the biggest questions in online content.

How Updating an Article Boosted Traffic from 111K to 220K Visitors/Month

How to Build a Strong Writing Portfolio That Gets You Noticed

7 steps for brands to become thought leaders, get early access to our course, future-proof against ai, land your dream clients, and command higher rates.

Created by Eleven’s most established editors, SEO strategists, and account managers.

Log In   0 The website uses cookies for functionality and the collection of anonymised analytics data. We do not set cookies for marketing or advertising purposes. By using our website, you agree to our use of cookies and our privacy policy . We're sorry, but you cannot use our site without agreeing to our cookie usage and privacy policy . You can change your mind and continue to use our site by clicking the button below. This confirms that you accept our cookie usage and privacy policy.

Free English Writing Lessons

Improve english writing – video.

Learn how to improve your English writing in this video lesson. You’ll see how you can make your written English clearer, easier to read and more effective.

Try Your First Online Class With A Teacher

Book your first class for just 8.99 EUR!

Try A Class

Formal and Informal English – Video

Learn how to use formal and informal English in spoken or written English. You can learn the differences between formal and informal English in this lesson.

More English Writing Lessons

How to write a band 9 ielts essay – video.

See Full Lesson

IELTS Writing Task 2 Analysis – Video

How to write emails in english – video, how to write a cv in english – video, improve ielts essays with paraphrasing – video, how to answer ielts writing task 1 general – video, how to tell a story in english – video, ielts writing linking words and phrases – video.

• Facebook 35
• Odnoklassniki icon Odnoklassniki 0
• VKontakte 0
• Pinterest 1
• LinkedIn 24

• How It Works
• Why write for us?
• Writer Testimonials
• Education/Academia
• Contact us to Hire a Writer
• Style Guide For Writers
• SEO Writing For Dummies
• OWJ Writer Panel

Writing in British English vs. American English

George Bernard Shaw famously said that “England and America are two countries divided by a common language,” and any American who’s ever been asked to write in British English has quickly seen why. The differences in American English vs. British English are many, and while there are a few rules of thumb you can follow when trying to adapt to British spelling, punctuation, and grammar rules, both dialects contain plenty of exceptions, contradictions, and things that just plain don’t make sense.

The differences between American and British English started with the Norman Conquest in 1066, when French started creeping into English, bringing not only new words but new spellings of words we already had. In the following centuries, some of those spellings shifted back to the original British ones, but in the 1700s, the English aristocracy became enamored with the fashionable French, adopting French-influenced spellings once again.

Here, then, for American writers who find themselves asked to write in British, are some of the major differences between British and American English.

Guidelines for British Spellings

Many common words that end in -or end in -our across the pond, so we disagree with the British on how to spell “favorite,” “color,” and “neighbor.” They say “favourite,” “colour,” and “neighbour.”

-ize/-ise, -yze/-yse

What do the Brits have against Z (or “zed,” as they call it)? You might start to wonder when you see words like “civilise.” If it ends in -ize or -yze here, it probably ends in -ise or -yse there, so whether it’s “realise” or “realize,” “analyse” or “analyze” depends on what country you’re in.

How do you spell “theater”? If you’re in New York, you might enjoy a night out at a Broadway theater, but if you’re going to the West End for a show, you’re headed to the “theatre.” Similarly, you’ll see “centre” for “center” and “metre” for “meter.”

If a word ends in -og here, it likely ends in -ogue there. The most common example of this British English spelling convention is “catalogue.”

For a noun ending in -ce , the verb form will generally end in -se : They say “practice” as a noun but “practise” as a verb, for instance. American English usually picks one form and sticks with it, such as “license” and “practice,” which are both nouns and verbs here.

Adding -s or -st

The British spellings of some prepositions add an extra -s or -st , such as in “towards” or “amongst.”

Retained ligatures

As English lost the ligatures æ and œ , the British converted them to digraphs, such as in “orthopaedic,” “encyclopaedia,” and “manoeuvre.” Meanwhile, Webster stripped them down to single vowels, so we save a little ink when we spell “orthopedic,” “encyclopedia,” and “maneuver.”

Doubled consonants

Verbs ending in a vowel followed by L often double the L when you add a suffix that starts with a vowel, such as in “traveller” or “cancelling” instead of the American “traveler” and “canceling.” But this is a pretty tricky area because the British aren’t consistent about it, and neither are we: We use “excelling,” for example, but they use “fooling.”

Other oddities of British English spelling

Here are a few other differences in British vs. American spelling that don’t seem to fall under any specific rule of thumb but might be helpful to know:

British Punctuation and Grammar

No oxford commas.

You might think that the country where Oxford commas came from would use them, but no. The truth is that the only place in Britain that uses the serial comma is, well, the Oxford University Press. While a lot of Americans like it, they’ll find very little company: The Brits don’t use it, the Canadians don’t use it, and neither do the world’s English-speaking journalists.

Single-quotes first

While we use double quotation marks (“”) to enclose a quote, in Britain, they prefer single ones instead (‘’).

Punctuation after quotes

In the U.S., if we’re writing a sentence that’s a quote, we’ll usually put the period or comma at the end before the closing quotation mark. But in the U.K., they usually close the quotation marks first, then write the period or comma.

Dropped periods after titles

If an abbreviation of an English courtesy title includes the first and last letters of a word, it doesn’t need a period after it in British English, so they’d write “Mr John Smith” or “Dr Mary Jones” without punctuation.

Pluralizing collective nouns

In America, we often treat a company, brand, or other group as a singular collective noun taking a singular verb. But the British often treat these as plurals, taking plural forms of verbs, so they might say things like “IBM issued their earnings report” or “the team have won three games in a row.”

More use of “got”

The British seem to like the word “got” a whole lot. For one, they don’t use the word “gotten”: While we’d say that “it’s gotten windy out there,” they’d just say that “it’s got windy out there.” Also, where we use “have,” the Brits tend to use “have got.” While we say “they have three apples,” they’d say “they’ve got three apples,” and if I want to say that “I have to go home early” and I’m writing for a British audience, I’d say that “I’ve got to go home early.”

“In hospital”

Here’s one specific quirk that has come up a lot in past projects: In British English, if you’re in the hospital, you’re merely “in hospital.” They draw a very fine distinction between being “in hospital,” meaning that you’re a patient being treated there, and being “in the hospital,” which to them often means only that you’re physically inside of a hospital building. It can also mean that someone is a patient at a specific hospital that’s already been referred to by name.

Mindy Young, an editor for Online Writing Jobs, got her start as a newspaper copy editor after earning her B.A. from Russell Sage College in Troy, NY. She spent nearly 13 years editing stories, writing headlines, and putting together pages for daily newspapers, and along the way, she also had the opportunity to write food columns and restaurant reviews. After earning a pair of Associated Press awards and a Suburban Newspaper Association award, she left journalism for the world of content marketing, where she puts her skills to work every day for OWJ clients and writers.

Share this post:

Recent posts.

• How Writers Can Ethically Use AI
• It’s Been a While …
• How to Format Content for Busy Readers
• SEO Content Writing 101: How to Create SEO Articles
• Know Your Portmanteaus and How to Use Them
• Article Formats
• Content Marketing
• Finding Good Links
• Freelance Writing
• Holiday Updates
• Writer Panel Improvements
• Writing Tips

We pay weekly

Connect with us, sign up for our newsletter, get to know us.

• Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2006-2013 QualityGal, 2013-2024 Online Writing Jobs   All rights reserved.

Emerson Professor, His Student, Selected for Best Essays Anthology

Writing, Literature & Publishing Distinguished Professor Jerald Walker has had an incredible six essays appear in the prestigious Best American Essays anthology, including the upcoming 2024 edition.

But this recent inclusion is special. His former student, Nicole Graev Lipson, MFA ’22, also has an essay appearing in the anthology. If that’s not enough, Walker’s first creative writing teacher at the University of Iowa, Amy Margolis, is included in the book.   

Walker said when he heard Lipson was also in the anthology, he got goosebumps.

“It is so difficult to get in, and to have a student in at the same time is not something you can begin to fantasize about,” said Walker. “When I reflect on it, if it were to happen, it would be Nicole. She’s absolutely a superstar.”

Walker talks glowingly about Lipson.

“I’ve been teaching for more than 25 years. I’ve never met a student more talented than Nicole,” added Walker. “The first time I had her in class, I just knew that this was someone who would probably do less learning from me than I would learn from her, because she was absolutely on that level. I instantly saw her as a peer.”

The anthology’s guest editor, Wesley Morris, feels the same way as Walker. In Morris’ introduction to the anthology, he raves about Lipson’s essay, “As They Like It: Learning to Follow My Child”, calling it a “miracle of storytelling”.

“I don’t know how you write about that struggle [a child’s gender identity journey] as a parent any better than this great, big airing out,” wrote Morris.

Her essay is appearing in her forthcoming essay collection, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters , which will be published in March 2025. The essay originally appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review .

“The essay was really about absorbing, and reflecting on that experience as a mother and what it was like to try to adapt in real time,” said Lipson. “How does that shift our relationship? Does it shift how I mother this child?

The Time was Right

Lipson regards her Emerson College experience as “beyond measure”. She was in the thick of raising three children, 7 years old and younger. Writing and journalism weren’t new to her, and she relished the opportunity to focus on her writing. She appreciated that the MFA program provided a dedicated space and community of people just as serious about the written word as her.

“Being part of that community improved my writing. Being in workshops with students from different backgrounds and life experiences than I’ve had, and different ages, made me a better writer,” said Lipson. “It gave me a breadth of perspective that [I would not have had] if I were trying to write this book alone. I don’t think I’d have a book without Emerson. It provided me the conditions that I could turn my attention to the project fully.”

Lipson and Walker remain good friends and both think it’s incredible that writing from Walker’s class as part of her thesis became the core of her book. (Technically speaking, she actually wrote the essay appearing in the anthology the summer of 2022, shortly after the MFA program.)

“He’s an extraordinary teacher. I really felt my voice and confidence evolve while I was in his class,” said Lipson. “There’s an expression…: that you should write what scares you or write what might be uncomfortable. This particular essay was as terrifying as anything I’ve written.”

After a full draft, Lipson sent it to Walker, knowing she could trust that he’d provide honest feedback without jumping to negative conclusions from questions the essay raises.

“Her writing on a sentence-by-sentence level is phenomenal. Sometimes you pause because it takes your breath away,” said Walker. “She’s challenging you to think. She’s intellectual, insightful, and has the ability to weave her personal narratives with literary theory and cultural criticism.”

Walker said he provided minimal feedback because he felt her essays were fully formed, polished, and near perfect. He suggested how to improve a sentence or phrase with a tweak.

Lipson said her writing is about womanhood, motherhood, and cultural expectations.

Cultural expectations, like what we see on screens, is a topic discussed in Walker’s essay, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Memoirist”. The essay is about how Black identities are shaped by pop culture.

Walker said Lipson is the only former student he’s shown unpublished work. He wanted her to read and provide feedback. He sent her a draft of his essay and she loved it.

“When I was growing up in the ’70s, and the coming of age in the ’80s, we watched a lot of Blaxploitation. Super Fly , Shaft , Foxy Brown ,” said Walker. “These movies would make me and my 15-, 16-, or 17-year-old friends want to emulate the characters and base our lives on the characters.”

Walker said at the time, the characters were envisioned as superheroes for Black kids growing up.

“The problem was …the characters often portrayed people who sold dope or were pimps, and committed crimes,” said Walker. “We wanted to emulate them, but they did things you wouldn’t want to emulate, and we were shaped by these movies.”

The essay’s title plays off the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” from the 2005 film Hustle & Flow .

“I’m showing how Black exploitation films influenced youth, but also talking about what it’s like to be a memoirist and to have a finite amount of material,” said Walker. “If you’re a longtime memoirist, you run out of material. Something that memoirists do when running thin, is they reveal more and more secrets, and personal stories they ordinarily wouldn’t share.”

Walker’s essay is in his new book, Magically Black and Other Essays , which was just released in September.

Walker found out his essay was selected for the anthology about an hour before Lipson. But he waited a day before telling Lipson because he wanted her to solely focus on her achievement.

Walker also reached out to Margolis, who he hasn’t seen in more than 25 years. She was his first creative writing teach at the University of Iowa when he was 19.

“[It’s incredible] that I’m in the anthology with my first creating writing teacher at Iowa, and the best student I’ve ever had at Emerson,” said Walker.

Walker and Lipson will celebrate the The Best American Essays 2024 with editor Kim Dana Kupperman and writer Brock Clarke on October 22 at the Brookline Booksmith from 7 to 8 pm. RSVP for the event by visiting Brookline Booksmith’s website .

News & Stories

Alumni , Faculty , Featured , Graduate and Professional Studies , School of the Arts , Writing Literature and Publishing

David Ertischek View All