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We are sarcastic, I'll give you that, but that's just part of the culture, sarcasm is humour, it's just part of daily life. We don't have the politeness thing in the UK. If somebody says "have a nice day" in the UK, we assume you're either trying to be ironic, which may or may not be funny. and/or you're "taking the piss" which again may or may not be funny depending on the mood and the day.

But malicious I think is the wrong word, larcenous, devious, even anarchistsic, yes. But we rarely do things to intentionly harm others. If we mean to hurt you we will acknowledge and revel in the fact that you feel agreived. Now admitedly most of the rest of the "English speaking" world dont understand the brits, becuase they're never sure when we're joking or not, most of the time we are, just as most people don't understand the joke.

I guess you would have to be a brit, or at least spend a few years in the UK, before you fully understood why we behave the way we do. We loathe (with a passion) people who try to be sincere, (whether real or not) people who try to speak from the moral high ground, (like our prime minister for example) public piety will be ridiculed. We know people are crap, so attempts to holier than thou, are frankly, "just asking for it"

The truth is, we don't like being mistaken for Americans, and we're very territorial about our language, it would be OK, if the rest of world understood that you speak American, which is not English. But by and large they don't. So much as with the hacker/cracker debate and the geek/nerd thing. We get annoyed and a little testy about it, especially in times of stress. Fellow brits will understand this. The correct way to deal with a pissed off brit is to be sarcastic. Because we can take it, just as well as we can dish it out. Most people however, are just not used to such robust banter. It's common in the UK, to address your best mates using the two worst swear words in the English language, (tw*t & c*nt) As in "hello you tw*t" This is not malicious, this is a fraternal greeting. I apprecite that you don't undertand this, but it is true.

I would urge you to try and get hold of some UK magazines, or even some UK books that deal with popular culture, this one is recent and a good place to start: http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/

Similarly, this one is also good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/034081885 9

Having said that, my wife is "a foriegner" and having read the book, doesn't believe it, more I think because she doesn't understand it. But so it goes, you can lead a horse to water and all that.
Should you ever got bored of the Fiesta, try a VW Golf, they're good too.

It's hard for some of us not to look at grammatical or spelling errors and wince

You would get along well with Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

This excerpt from her book "Talk to the Hand", makes a bit of good reading. You might want to read her other book "Eats, shoots and leaves"* if you're against punctuation abuse.

*"The joke the book is named after is this:

A panda walks into a diner and orders a sandwich. After finishing his
meal, he pulls out a gun, fires two shots into the ceiling and turns to
leave. The waitress shouts, "Why did you do that?" The panda hands her a
copy of a badly punctuated book on wildlife and says, "I'm a panda! Look
it up!"

The waitress opens the book to the listing for pandas:

"PANDA: Large, black and white, bear-like mammal native to China. Eats,
shoots and leaves.""

Well that lady who called me the "F"-word because she wanted something I couldn't give her (I don't make the rules) must have some serious bones sticking out of her.

Maybe it's not "the bones" but the fact that modern manners has gone into the toilet, and we all are too busy making excuses for it to set things right?

I learned about this by reading the excellent panda book. I've decided to extend the quotation rule to also include hyperlinks, since that little period can get easily get lost when displayed in a strange color and underlined.

Panda

Here's a great book about punctuation.

It's even faster if you weed out the resumes with grammar and punctuation errors. :) Check out http://www.eatsshootsandleaves.com/ for a great book on proper punctuation and a lot of funny examples of what can go wrong when it proper punctuation is ignored.

Seriously, though, people should be a lot more careful about proofreading their resumes. I had one from a guy that ran a "multi-disciple group" and another who had worked on firmware for a "laser scare removal device".

The title is Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The official site is here. Also, it is a book, not a short story or an article. Either underline it or put it in italics - do not put it in quotes. And where's the question mark?

Now: I have yet to pick the book up. However, I do have a BA and an MA in English, which might explain it for you.

The virus named, Korgo, started showing up . . .

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I highly recommend that the submitter (Anonymous User) immediately head over to his/her favorite online book retailer and purchase Eats, Shoots and Leaves.