Miss Eos, thank you for your useful advice. I think you're right. I
have an automobile engineering dictionary by a British writer which
covers both British and American usage. In the dictionary, the entry
of "dead battery" is defined as "= flat bettery", noting "dead battery"
is an informal usage (whether it is an US usage is not mentioned).
Where an entry is referred to as "informal", I always wonder whetehr it
is appropriate to use it in a formal context... In my limited
experience, an American goverment offier used "tranny" (meaning
transmission) in a letter addressed to us. I was a little surprised
becuase I had thought tranny is a very informal and colloquial
expresstion which shouldn't be used in a serious business letter???
Languages and their audience do evolve. It is hard to catch up with the
trend while I'm in Japan!
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