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A comment on Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow. Parent comment

Re:Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow by joonix on Monday July 01, 2013 @06:38PM (#5974118)
>Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody.

This is British writing style. Brits leave off the preposition "from" in these types of sentences; Americans put it in.

American English: "Administration now seeks to stop me from exercising a basic right."

British English: "Administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right."

I'm not a linguistics or grammar expert so I can't name the proper terms for all this. I've just observed in the past that this is a "Britishism" that differs from American style. It's interesting to see it here. Snowden wouldn't write like that. IMO, he needs to ditch Wikileaks because they've done nothing but harm him and seem to only be interested in advancing their agenda.

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Re:Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow by thorum on Monday July 01, 2013 @07:01PM (#5974267)
I think all this really says is he's working with a European editor. Which you'd kind of expect since Snowden is an IT guy, not a writer.
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Re:Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow by bobwaycott on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @01:12AM (#5975973)
Hardly convincing. I am American, and frequently edit my writing to remove extraneous "from"s and "that"s which make it into my sentences as a product of spoken habit. I usually try to make my writing habits a bit tighter than my speaking habits.
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Re:Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow by adamconroy on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:32PM (#5974824)
Nice work Sherlock. Except I must say as a counter example that I am British and I flip-flop between using 'from' and not using 'from' in such sentences.
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Re:Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow by vinceguidry on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:58PM (#5974957)
You might, but I've yet to read American writing that leaves out the 'from'. It certainly wouldn't ever occur to me to do that.
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Re:Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow by mbillie1 on Monday July 01, 2013 @10:38PM (#5975464)
As an American who often adopts idioms and sentence structures from various things he reads, I will say (for me at least) that it depends entirely on how much, and what, you read :)
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