British People Do Floors Wrong

“When the US photographer Ormond Gigli described the composition of one of his pictures in which women appeared in the windows of a multi-storey building (My best shot, 2 May, page 19, G2), some readers were left wondering by the reference to ‘my wife (second floor, far right), the supervisor’s wife (third floor, third from left)’. To clarify: the references to floors were in US English; in the photograph, Ormond’s wife was on what would usually be known as the first floor in British English, and the supervisor’s wife on the second floor.”