Oh, and one of those Americanisms that I don't know whether it's regional or not is the way I've seen 'couple things' (or the word couple meaning a few). Here, we would say 'a couple of things' but some Americans (I'm not sure all) just say 'a couple things'. I'd never leave out the 'of' unless that was right for my characters, as it's just bad English to me. Comments welcome.