Finally, there are certain differences in punctuation. The English, as everyone knows, put a comma after the street number of a house, making it, for example, /34, St. James street/. They usually insert a comma instead of a period after the hour when giving the time in figures, /e. g./, /9,27/, and omit the /0/ when indicating less than 10 minutes, /e. g./, /8,7/ instead of /8.07/. They do not use the period as the mark of the decimal, but employ a dot at the level of the upper dot of a colon, as in /3·1416/. They cling to the hyphen in such words as /to-day/ and /to-night/; it begins to disappear in America. They use /an/ before /hotel/ and /historical/; Kipling has even used it before /hydraulic/;[39] American usage prefers /a/. But these small differences need not be pursued further. FOOTNOTES: [1] Fowler & Fowler, in The King's English, p. 23, say that "when it was proposed to borrow from France what we [/i. e./, the English] now know as the /closure/, it seemed certain for some time that with the thing we should borrow the name, /clôture/; a press campaign resulted in /closure/." But in the /Congressional Record/ it is still /cloture/, though with the loss of the circumflex accent, and this form is generally retained by American newspapers. [2] Richard P. Read: The American Language, /New York Sun/, March 7, 1918. [3] /To shew/ has completely disappeared from American, but it still survives in English usage. /Cf./ The /Shewing/-Up of Blanco Posnet, by George Bernard Shaw. The word, of course, is pronounced /show/, not /shoe/. /Shrew/, a cognate word, still retains the early pronunciation of /shrow/ in English, but is now phonetic in American. [4] /Cf./ Lounsbury; English Spelling and Spelling Reform; p. 209 /et seq./ Johnson even advocated /translatour/, /emperour/, /oratour/ and /horrour/. But, like most other lexicographers, he was often inconsistent, and the conflict between /interiour/ and /exterior/, and /anteriour/ and /posterior/, in his dictionary, laid him open to much mocking criticism. [5] In a letter to Miss Stephenson, Sept. 20, 1768, he exhibited the use of his new alphabet. The letter is to be found in most editions of his writings. [6] R. C. Williams: Our Dictionaries; New York, 1890, p. 30. [7] Nomenclature of Diseases and Condition, prepared by direction of the Surgeon General; Washington, 1916. [8] American Medical Association Style Book; Chicago, 1915. [9] /Democratic Review/, March, 1856. [10] /Vide/ English Spelling and Spelling Reform, p. 229. [11] A Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Series of Books ...; New York, 1831. [12] Good English; p. 137 /et seq./ [13] Studies in English; pp. 64-5. [14] Americanisms and Briticisms; New York, 1892, p. 37. [15] Authors' & Printers' Dictionary ... an attempt to codify the best typographical practices of the present day, by F. Howard Collins; 4th ed., revised by Horace Hart; London, 1912.