As any crochet fan will know crocheting has a terminology all of it's own. What you may not realise as a beginner is that the UK and the US terminology is subtlety different. Why it has to be different I'll never know and it is a constant annoyance having to translate from one to the other. Your favourite will most likely be a which ever you happened to learn first.
So how can you tell if a pattern follows the UK or US standard? It's easy really. If the pattern uses the term 'single crochet' (sc), then you can be sure it is a US pattern. There is no such stitch as single crochet in UK terminology, instead it is called a double crochet. You can find plenty of neat reference charts so I am not going to list them all here. I just want to make any beginners aware that these two standards do exist and you need to be aware which terminology your pattern uses.
Which is best? Well being from the UK, I have to say I think the best is definitely the US terminology. Yes indeed. How unpatriotic! Why? Firstly, if you compare the two then the US is more logical. It uses single, double, treble as the main stitches. This makes sense to me. The UK version uses double, treble, double treble for these same three stitches. What a mouthful.
If you are starting out I would urge you to make the US terminology your 'native' crochet language because as well as being more logical, more importantly the vast majority of patterns on the Internet are US in origin and therefore use the US terms. Also most of the good crochet books I have come across are US in origin. Yes, there are some great UK patterns and books, but there are LOADS MORE using US terms. So go with the flow and use the one most of your patterns will probably in.
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