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US academic English is a house style, not a better English. If you learned English outside the United States, or learned it as an additional language, most of what a US instructor reads as “American” comes down to a short list of conventions you can check one at a time: double quotation marks, periods and commas inside them, a comma before the last item in a list, American spelling, and a handful of words that Merriam-Webster itself labels British. Most of them can be found with your word processor’s Find box.
Two things make the job harder than a list of spelling swaps. First, “American” is not one rulebook. Your syllabus names APA, MLA, or Chicago, and those guides agree on some conventions and split on others — Chicago even reversed its own colon rule in its 2024 edition. Second, some text must not be converted at all. A quotation, the title of a source, and the name of an organization stay exactly as they were published, British spelling included. Below: what to fix everywhere, what to look up first, and what to leave alone, with each style guide quoted on its own rule.
- Find the rulebook first. The style guide on your syllabus decides, and APA, MLA, and Chicago do not even take the same position on spelling.
- Fix these everywhere: double quotation marks, periods and commas inside the closing mark, the serial comma, and ’s on names that end in s.
- Look these up first: a capital after a colon and capitals for prepositions in titles. MLA and Chicago’s 18th edition disagree on both.
- Use Merriam-Webster’s labels as the test for words. It marks “whilst” and “learnt” chiefly British. It does not label “towards,” or “marks” in the sense of grades, so those are not errors.
- Never Americanize a quotation, a source’s title, or an organization’s name.
- A spell-checker cannot see article or count-noun errors, because every word in them is spelled correctly. Those need a reading pass of their own.
This is a conventions pass, not a full edit. Run it after your argument and structure are settled — the process in how to edit your own essay comes first — and before the final surface check in our proofreading checklist.
American vs British English: what actually differs in a US paper
Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab puts it plainly in its section for multilingual writers: “multiple varieties of the English language exist. These include American English, British English, Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English, and so on.” Those varieties do not differ only in vocabulary, Purdue adds: “They happen also in terms of spelling, pronunciation, sentence structure, accent, and meaning.”
Your English is not wrong, so the aim here is not to repair it. It is to switch a finished draft into the variety your course is graded in, the way you would switch a finished paper from one citation style to another.
Between American and British English, most of the differences that matter in a US paper fall into four groups: quotation marks and the punctuation at a closing mark, spelling, a short list of words such as “whilst” and “learnt,” and all-numeral dates. Comparison charts also list the serial comma, and one adds a capital after a colon, but in a US course your style guide decides both, and the guides disagree on the second. Each is covered below.
Step zero: find out which “American” your course uses
Open the syllabus and find the style guide, with its edition. Chicago’s own editors describe the student’s situation exactly: you may “need MLA for one project and Chicago (or Turabian) for the next—and APA after that.” The three do not even agree on spelling policy.
| Guide | What it says about spelling |
|---|---|
| APA (7th edition) | “In general, spelling and hyphenation should match the spellings given in either the Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary or the APA Dictionary of Psychology.” |
| Chicago (18th edition) | Recommends Merriam-Webster (CMOS 7.1), but “Chicago style allows for regional variations in spelling. Unless you are writing for a publisher that expects otherwise, it’s best to choose a dictionary that matches the variety of English you are writing.” |
| MLA | An MLA Style Center answer written for the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook (the current one is the ninth): “When you are writing a paper for a class in the United States, it is sensible to use American spelling, but in other contexts British spelling may be appropriate.” |
Read together, they point one way: in a US course, American spelling is the safe default. But a consistently British paper is not automatically “wrong” under Chicago’s answer, which turns on who you are writing for — in a class, your instructor. If you would rather keep the spelling you learned, ask, then hold the choice everywhere. Write the decision at the top of a one-line style sheet — the running record of spelling and style choices that our proofreading vs copy editing guide describes — so that page ten matches page one.
The rules the major US guides share — fix these everywhere
These hold in every guide that publishes a rule on them.
| Convention | US academic form | Where the guide says so |
|---|---|---|
| Main quotation marks | Double: “like this” | MLA: in British style “it uses single quotation marks instead of double, and commas and periods are placed outside the quotation marks.” Chicago’s Q&A: “The British tend to use double quotation marks only for quotations within quotations.” |
| Periods and commas at a closing quotation mark | Inside: “like this,” and “like this.” | APA: “Place periods and commas within closing single or double quotation marks.” MLA Handbook, as quoted by the MLA Style Center: “By convention, commas and periods that directly follow quotations go inside the closing quotation marks.” Chicago: “commas and periods are placed before a closing quotation mark.” |
| Colons, semicolons, question marks, exclamation points, dashes | Outside the closing mark, unless they belong to the quotation | APA: “Place other punctuation marks inside quotation marks only when they are part of the quoted material.” Chicago: they “go after a closing quotation mark unless they belong to the quoted matter.” |
| Serial comma | “surveys, interviews, and field notes” | APA: “Use a serial comma (also called an Oxford comma, Harvard comma, or series comma) between elements in a series of three or more items.” MLA advocates it “in all series of three or more items or phrases.” Chicago: it “has officially been Chicago style since 1906.” |
| Possessive of a name ending in s | Rhimes’s, not Rhimes’ | Chicago’s editors: “Chicago, MLA, and APA always add an apostrophe and an s, even for names that already end in s.” |
APA’s two quotation-mark rules in that table come from its free Quotations page. APA’s free website does not carry the whole manual, though — in its own words, “Only a subset of the guidance is presented on the website” — so where its free pages are silent, as on a capital after a colon, check the Publication Manual.
The exception: a citation after the quotation
When a parenthetical citation follows a quotation at the end of your sentence, the period moves to after the citation, because the citation belongs to your sentence: Romantic poetry is characterized by the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth 263). That is how Purdue OWL prints its MLA in-text examples, and APA’s Quotations page gives the same rule for short quotations: “If the citation appears at the end of a sentence, put the end punctuation after the closing parenthesis for the citation.” An MLA Style Center answer written for the eighth edition gives the reasoning: “A period is needed after the citation to indicate where the writer’s sentence ends.”
The serial comma is a style-guide rule, not an American one
Comparison charts usually file this comma under American English. In October 2026 we opened the pages ranking in the US for “american vs british english academic writing” and could read fifteen of them, two from archived copies. Five discuss the serial comma, and all five frame it as an American-versus-British difference. Two of those also note that APA and Chicago recommend it, but none mentions that a major American stylebook leaves it out. Chicago’s editors give the fuller picture: “Chicago, MLA, and APA all recommend the serial comma; AP does not (except where ambiguity threatens).” AP is the Associated Press Stylebook, which journalists depend on — so lists without the comma are normal in American news writing.
So the rule you follow in a paper comes from your style guide, not from your country. MLA makes the case for it on clarity, not nationality: “With the exception of newspapers, most publications use the serial comma, because it helps writers avoid ambiguity.” Its example is hard to argue with — in “strawberry, peach and mango and pineapple,” you cannot tell which two fruits are blended.
Where the guides split — look these up before you change anything
A blanket “make it American” pass breaks on the conventions where US guides disagree with each other. Two affect the body of a paper; one affects the reference list.
| Convention | MLA | Chicago (18th ed.) | APA (7th ed.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital after a colon when one complete sentence follows | Lowercase when the next word “is normally lowercased.” Capitalize when the colon introduces “a rule or principle,” “several related sentences,” or “a capitalized word such as a proper noun.” MLA’s own example also keeps the capital that opens a quotation. | Capital: “the 18th edition recommends an initial cap for any complete sentence following a colon.” | Not on APA’s free website; check the Publication Manual. |
| Prepositions in titles of works | Lowercase “regardless of length” | Capitalized “if they’re at least five letters long” | Capitalize “prepositions of four letters or more” |
| Dates inside the reference list | Copy the pattern in your guide’s own examples. Chicago’s citation guide prints “New York Times, December 13, 2023.” An MLA Style Center works-cited entry prints “Slate, 12 May 2011.” Converting every date to one order will break one of them. | ||
The preposition row is Chicago’s editors’ own summary of all three guides; the MLA and Chicago colon cells and the two date examples quote each guide directly.
In your own prose, write the month as a word. An all-numeral date such as 06/07/2026 means June 7 to one reader and July 6 to another, and spelling the month removes the question.
Chicago’s colon rule changed between editions. Its Q&A says that “Chicago style in the 17th edition is to lowercase after a colon unless two or more complete sentences follow,” while the 18th capitalizes. A 2022 post on Chicago’s own blog still describes the lowercase rule, labeled 17th edition. If you search the rule, check which edition the page is answering, and match it to the one on your syllabus.
Only one of the fifteen comparison pages we read covers capitals after a colon at all, and it presents the capital as the American rule. In an MLA paper — the style Chicago’s editors say is “used mainly by students who write papers on literature” — that advice puts a capital where MLA puts a lowercase letter.
Words: change what Merriam-Webster labels British, and nothing else
APA names Merriam-Webster.com as its spelling authority, and Chicago recommends Merriam-Webster too. That gives you a clean test for any word you are unsure about: look it up and read the label. If Merriam-Webster marks the word, or the sense you are using, as British, change it. If it carries no regional label, Merriam-Webster is treating it as American English too, even if it sounds British to you.
| If you wrote | Merriam-Webster’s entry says | Use instead |
|---|---|---|
| “whilst” | “chiefly British : while” | while |
| “learnt” | “chiefly British past tense and past participle of learn” | learned |
| “programme” | “chiefly British spelling of program” | program |
| “maths” | “chiefly British : mathematics” | mathematics |
| “full stop” | “chiefly British : a point . used to show the end of a sentence or an abbreviation : period” | period |
| “revise,” meaning study for an exam | “British : to study again : review” | review, study |
The same test stops you over-correcting, which matters as much. Merriam-Webster defines a mark as “a symbol used to represent a teacher’s estimate of a student’s work or conduct especially : grade,” with no regional label, so “marks” is not an error in a US paper. And on “towards” it says: “Toward and towards are two forms of the same word. They have been used interchangeably since their inception in the 9th century. Today, toward is more common in the U.S. and Canada, while towards tends to be preferred elsewhere.” That is a preference, not a mistake. Pick one and keep it.
Let the spell-checker go first, then check behind it
For spelling patterns — “colour,” “organise,” “centre,” “defence” — select the whole draft (Ctrl+A, or Cmd+A on a Mac), set its language to US English, and let the checker do the first pass. The selection matters. Microsoft’s instructions for Word begin “Click or tap where you’re going to add text, or select the text that you want to mark as a different language,” so with nothing selected, the setting is meant for what you type next. Then: “On the Review tab select Language > Set Proofing Language. Select the language you want to use. Select OK.” Mac and web menus differ slightly. In Google Docs, use File > Language.
Then check behind it. In a 2022 post, Chicago’s editors noted that “many spelling variations don’t count as wrong”: Word’s US check passes “fulfil,” “grey,” “acknowledgements,” and “instalment,” variants “common in US English but not as common as the first-listed versions of these terms in a US dictionary like Merriam-Webster.” Many “-lled” forms are the same; Merriam-Webster’s travel entry reads “traveled or travelled,” with no label. An unlabeled variant is neither British nor wrong, so the only fix is consistency. APA’s spelling page: “If the dictionary offers a choice of spellings, select one and use it consistently throughout your paper.” Pick the first-listed form and hold it.
Last, search for these four strings — “isation,” “yse,” “our,” and “lled” — and look up what they find. Change a word Merriam-Webster labels British; bring a variant in line with your chosen spelling. Innocent hits such as four, journal, called, and analyses (the plural of analysis, and correct) take a minute to skip.
If English is an additional language: two checks no spell-checker makes
If English is not your first language, two patterns deserve a dedicated pass. A spell-checker cannot help with either, because every word in them is spelled correctly.
Articles. Purdue OWL gives the rule in one line: “The is used to refer to specific or particular nouns; a/an is used to modify non-specific or non-particular nouns.” Read every singular count noun in the draft and ask two questions: does it have an article (or a word such as this or my), and does your reader already know which one you mean?
Count and noncount nouns. Purdue again: “A noncount noun is one that usually cannot be expressed in a plural form,” and “Much modifies only uncountable nouns. Many modifies only countable nouns.” Rather than memorize a list, check the label. A learner’s dictionary such as the Britannica Dictionary marks each sense [count] or [noncount]: it labels information [noncount], and labels the main sense of evidence [noncount] while listing a narrower sense that is [count]. Check the sense you mean.
What to leave exactly as you found it
Change in your own sentences
- Spelling of your own words
- Single quotation marks around your quotations, which become double
- Where the period or comma sits at a closing quotation mark
- Words Merriam-Webster labels British
- Numeral-only dates in your prose
Leave as published
- Spelling inside a quotation
- The title of a source, including its punctuation
- The names of organizations, departments, and programs
- Dates inside reference entries, which follow your guide
Quotations keep their spelling. The MLA Style Center answered this in March 2026, under the question of whether to mark British spelling with “sic” in a US context: “No. If the spelling in a quotation simply follows a different standard system, it is not an error, and ‘sic’ is not needed.” A quoted “behaviour” stays “behaviour,” and it needs no apology.
Titles keep their punctuation. MLA’s rule for serial commas in titles follows the title page: “If the title displayed on the title page of your source contains a serial comma, include the comma when you reproduce the title.” If it has none, do not add one. Its own example is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which stays without the comma even in a paper that uses serial commas everywhere else.
Names keep their spelling. A university’s “Centre for Teaching” is a proper name, and changing it misnames the institution.
Moving a period inside a closing quotation mark is not tampering, though. MLA treats it as one of several accepted typographic conventions for quoting, and says “the imperative to transcribe the wording of quotations exactly, in other words, is compatible with conventions for integrating them into one’s own prose.” APA agrees: its list of changes that “can be made to direct quotations without alerting readers” includes this one: “Single quotation marks may be changed to double quotation marks and vice versa.” The words stay the source’s. The punctuation around them is yours.
One paragraph, edited
Here is a short paragraph from an MLA literature paper, written the way a student taught British conventions might draft it, then edited to US conventions. The quoted words are real — Virginia Woolf’s, from the passage of Mrs. Dalloway that the MLA Style Center uses in its own example, with the page number MLA gives.
Invented example — before editing. In Woolf’s opening pages, the street has ‘come to a standstill’. Whilst the motor car waits outside the shop, the narrative moves between onlookers, organising the street around a single event: the reader has learnt to see one moment through many eyes. Clarissa looks out ‘with her little pink face pursed in enquiry’ (14). Sound, heat and waiting become one experience.
In Woolf’s opening pages, the street has “come to a standstill.” While the motor car waits outside the shop, the narrative moves between onlookers, organizing the street around a single event: the reader has learned to see one moment through many eyes. Clarissa looks out “with her little pink face pursed in enquiry” (14). Sound, heat, and waiting become one experience.
Seven decisions, each tied to a rule above:
- Single marks became double, and the period moved inside after “standstill.”
- “Whilst” became “while” — Merriam-Webster labels it chiefly British.
- “Organising” became “organizing” — American spelling, the default for a US course.
- “Learnt” became “learned” — labeled chiefly British.
- The lowercase “the” after the colon stayed. This is an MLA paper, and MLA lowercases a single sentence after a colon. Under Chicago’s 18th edition it would become “The.”
- “Enquiry” stayed, because it is Woolf’s spelling inside a quotation. The period stayed after the citation.
- A serial comma went in after “heat.”
Not one of those edits changed what the paragraph argues. That is the test of a conventions pass: the reader sees a different house style and the same writer.
The checklist, in the order to run it
Find APA, MLA, or Chicago on the syllabus, with its edition. Write your spelling decision at the top of a one-line style sheet.
Highlight every quotation, source title, and organization name, so you skip them as you work through Find results. Never use Replace All on this pass.
Select the whole draft (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A), then Review > Language > Set Proofing Language in Word, or File > Language in Google Docs. Search “isation,” “yse,” “our,” and “lled”: change labeled British forms, and make variants match your chosen spelling.
Search for the opening single mark (‘). The closing one (’) is the same character as an apostrophe, so searching for it returns every contraction and possessive. If the draft was typed with straight marks ('), all three are one character, so read every hit. Make every main quotation double, and keep single marks only for a quotation inside a quotation.
Search for the closing double mark (”) and look at what follows it. A period or comma moves inside, unless a citation follows. A colon or semicolon stays outside unless it belongs to the quotation. A question mark goes inside only if it belongs to the quotation.
Read every list of three or more items and put a comma before the final “and” or “or.”
Look up anything that sounds regional. Change it only if Merriam-Webster labels it British in the sense you are using.
Capitals after colons, capitals in titles of works, and the date pattern in your reference list — each against your guide, not against this page.
One slow pass for articles and plurals, and nothing else.
Where self-editing stops
Everything above is mechanical, and it is yours to do. It is also the layer a copy editor works on: grammar, usage, punctuation, and a style sheet that keeps the document consistent. None of it touches your argument.
If you want another reader on this pass, check your syllabus and your school’s academic integrity policy first, because they decide how much outside help a graded paper may have. That applies to software as well as to people; our guide to whether AI can proofread your essay covers where those policies tend to draw the line. If your course allows editing help, our editing and proofreading service works on the draft you wrote, to the scope you set: conventions only, if that is all you want touched.
