Checks vs cheques

One cool little difference between the UK and the USA is checks: here, when you open a bank account, they give you a big pile of checks (sic). In the UK these days, a book of 50 cheques is, like, a lifetime supply, but here in the USA they actually use the darn things.

Anyway, cheques are smaller, they have your address on them, they have a space for you to write on the cheque what it's for, they have a carbon for you to keep track of what it was for and, best of all, when you lodge them, your bank lets you see a wee pdf scan of them through online banking. How cool is that?

Oh, and lodging checks is great: you go to a bank machine and feed it in. It scans it, works out how much the check is for, asks you if that's right, and lodges it. It might never been seen by another human!