#britishwriting

[phanfic]

Hello, I've come across a problem in my writing. One part of my chaptered AU takes place in a secondary school and I wondered if the classrooms had specific names? In Austria the classrooms are usually labelled from 1 to 8, depending in which academic year the pupils are. Does this exist in England? Thanks in advance!

lol classroom naming in england good luck with it

basically pick a system and stick with it. They're rarely labelled by academic year, because students of all years use the classrooms (it's only in primary school that kids stay in the same class for every lesson)

I'm just going to tell you 3 common systems but realistically every school is different

1) Subject. Some schools have 'blocks' of classrooms dedicated to teaching a specific branch of subjects; so maths classrooms would be numbered M1-M8 for example

2) location. my secondary school was pretty large. It had an east wing and a west wing which were almost separate buildings - there were classrooms E1 - E45 and classrooms W1-W60, and then there was the C block in the middle (went up to C14). All classrooms outside those specific regions were numbered consecutively 1 to about 130

3) the 'pray someone will tell you where to go' systems. Most schools have a good deal of stupidly named classrooms to throw you, but these are the worst. Some parts of the school (usually parts that were paid for by some philanthropist) will have actual names on the classrooms just to make it extra specially difficult. There will be classrooms in outbuildings with names like 'M38C' These are usually schools that are very old, so when the building was first built it made sense like 1-50 maybe, but then someone extended it on one side and then another and then another and it just got stupid

The main thing to take from this is that it really doesn't matter - you could spout absolute rubbish and it would be believable. if you just go up 1-100 then you can't go wrong :)

[phanfic]

(I was the one with the question about desk jockeys & builders) You said it depends on what they're doing as an office job, but what are some kinds of jobs that require someone to just sit behind a desk all day in Britain & what would they be referred to as?? (literally any jobs & names for them would be much appreciated)

erm okay i’ll do my best to think of some general ones!

accountant (finances mostly)

bank staff - temporary work, part of a ‘bank’ of employees that can do most secretarial and admin work and will be moved around a lot where needed

temp - temporary office worker. Literally anything can have temps, can be for any kind of office work

admin/administrative assistant - administration stuff i really don’t know how to explain these things omg i feel like you have all the same words anyway like writing letters and stuff

secretary

clerk

HR (human resources)

things like ‘customer services representative’ 

office assistant/junior ___

receptionist

office manager

sales assistant?

call centre

you need to decide the company they’re working for before you can figure this out though, like, is it an insurance company? is it a retail chain? is it a bank? are they writing letters for an attorney?

so you can make a title like 'product marketing manager' or 'regional sales manager' 

~isthisjustphantasy

[phanfic]

It's a sofa :]] they even have the 'sofa crease', which was a cushion that got smaller than the others by the amount of time dan sat in the 'browsing position' on it. They replaced it now, although dan said it'll probably get damaged again, bc he keeps sitting this way... ow wow, that a lot of stuff I said

okay thank you!! 

[phanfic]

the pet names ask just made me think about what irish people say (moth is your girlfriend; pronounced without the th its v weird) and chicken (like you say baby) idk why im telling you this it could be useful if people are writing fics that involve Adam??

[phanfic]

an american seeking advice: is there ever a point when you use too much british slang while writing?

don't try to force words in just to make it sound more 'british' - i'm british and when writing i consciously try to avoid words that the international internet audience might not understand bc anything that reads weird is going to throw your reader out of the story idk how to explain it for example we'd say 'five quid' but i'd never write that because i'm aware that it looks silly. Someone might be completely absorbed in the story, then see that and think 'what' and as soon as they go back to remembering it's a thing written by a person they're out of the story so to speak and they have to get back in again. Better to be neutral than one way or the other :)

[phanfic]

yeh that makes sense. another quick question, from what you've seen, what year do most authors use that the boys are in in school fics? i feel like it's the years 11 -13 because those are the older teen ages right?

yep but remember year 11 is the last year of secondary/high school whereas 12 and 13 are the two years of college :)

[phanfic]

this is probably weird to ask but i'm reading up on England's school system just for general knowlegde and to help out with writing school settings in fics, and I was wondering in sixth form, (is that what yall call it or do yall call it college for short?) anyway i read that students study usually 3 subjects in that area. . but are there any required classes in those years? or is the site i read from crap?

it’s called ‘sixth form college’ and it really depends as to whether people shorten it to college, ‘sixth form’ is a bit of a mouthful so no one really says that; more likely they’ll say the actual name of the college or just ‘college’ - where i’m from at least everyone just says college.

there are no required classes because college is optional - hence the separation from school. You leave school at 16 and can go get a job or whatever, or you can chose further education and go to college (free) and then if you still like learning you can chose higher education and go to uni (definitely not free sobs) (i think there might be a new law now that kids either have to go to college or get an apprenticeship but don’t quote me)

You pick any four/three AS subjects in your first year and then you drop one for the second year and take 3 A2 (the AS is half of the A level) but you might take up another AS in your second year just for fun ha

does that make sense? education is confusing man