Not exactly my first fanfic, but it's the first one that I feel comfortable with sharing online. I've posted fanfics before but I always second guessed myself and deleted them. I hope I won't end up changing my mind and deleting this one.
This was meant to be humor, but it ended up being more angst. Comments and criticisms are welcome.
When England came to visit America one day, the two treated each other like strangers. It was quite a cold reunion, especially considering that it had been months since they had last seen each other.
Ten years ago, America and England would have been laughing and joking with each other like the brothers they'd always been, but times were changing. The colonists were talking about breaking away from the British crown and were becoming increasingly passionate about it.
America had assured England time and time again that no, he did NOT want to start a revolution. In reality only about a third of the colonists actually wanted independence, and no one really wanted to go to war against the British Empire. Still, that didn't stop England from worrying, and every time he visited America, he would act more and more paranoid.
England was almost always angry these days, and it was becoming rather intolerable. If America refused to do his chores, England would accuse America of wanting to start a revolution. If America socialized with his colonists, England would accuse him of spreading reactionary ideas. In fact, if America even so much as complained about anything, anything at all, England got upset.
Did America himself want independence? It was hard to say, really. Some colonists were passionate about independence, others wanted to stay loyal to the crown, and still others just wanted to carry on with their daily lives, not really caring if they broke away from the crown or not, but feeling increasingly pressurized to pick a side as the debates became more heated. Just as America's people had mixed feelings about breaking away from the crown, America had mixed feelings about breaking away from England. On the one hand, America was getting increasingly more annoyed at how England was acting. America was a grown man now - in fact, he had outgrown England decades ago - and yet England still treated him like a little kid. But on the other hand, America couldn't simply to break away from someone who had cared and loved him since he was a child. It would break both of their hearts.
And so America decided to simply put up with England as best as he could.
That late afternoon, America ate England's cooking without complaint. He even complimented the food just to make England happy. Right after the meal, England presented America with gift: a really large and intensive philosophy textbook. He told America to read the first two chapters and write an essay on it. America grumbled but did what he was told. He didn't want to make England angry.
About two hours later England came into America's room to check in him. He looked over America's shoulder to catch a glimpse of what he was writing. At first England was satisfied by what he saw. Then, something caught his eye.
England yanked the piece of paper right out from under America's pen. America, indignant, started to shout,
"Hey! What are you-"
"You put the period inside the quotation!" England yelled, pointing at the error for America to see.
Instead of simply handing back the piece of paper, England threw it at him and shouted some more. "That's so typical of you! You're always trying to assert your independence!"
And then, without giving America a chance to reply, England stormed out of the room in an angry fit.
For a moment America just sat there, staring into empty space, too shocked to move.
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. How dare England accuse him of doing this on purpose. It was an honest mistake. Really!
America looked at his essay for a long moment. Starting from the very beginning, he systematically scratched out every instance where there was a quotation mark followed by a period and rewrote them in the 'incorrect' format that England hated so much.
Maybe he did want independence from England after all.
From that point on, America always wrote the ending punctuation mark on the inside of the quotations.
When you are quoting something from another source, British format is like this:
"I only took the regular course".
But American format looks like this:
"I only took the regular course."
Have you ever wondered why? (Well, even if you haven't, I'm gonna tell you anyway.)
A couple of months ago my college professor told us a little story. I don't remember all of the details, but it went something like this:
A British guy came to America (I forget what for) during pre-revolutionary times and told this American colonist guy to write something...a letter or a document or something...I forget. The British guy noticed that the American guy had put a period on the inside of a quote, so the British guy freaked out and said something like "That's so typical of you Americans, always wanting to revolt!"
It was an honest mistake actually. The American guy got really mad at the British guy for making such an accusation, and this, my professor jokingly said, was the "shot heard from round the world." From then on, Americans always put the ending punctuation mark on the inside of the quote just to spite the British.
This is just a myth though. No one knows if something like this actually happened. It's more likely that someone had written a book in which all of the punctuation marks were inside the quotes, not knowing what the correct rules were, and then somebody else read that book and wrote a book with the same improper punctuation, and then another book was written based on the previous book and so on until the improper became the norm.
Isn't language fascinating?