This popped up the other day, as I was buying tickets to see David Doucet perform at Buffa’s in New Orleans.
The NOOB in question is “tick,” where Americans would historically say “check.” (The “should you wish to receive” sounds off as well, perhaps more formal than British. The U.S. norm would be “if you want to…”)
I see that I wrote about “tick” in the very first year of the blog, 2011. I’ve seen it from time to time here over the years, often in the expression “ticks [as opposed to “checks”] all the boxes.”
Some of the commenters on the original post seemed to differ on whether British “tick” and and American “check” indicated the same mark. Some said both meant a single diagonal lower-left-to-upper right line, while others said no, an American checkmark starts with a short diagonal, upper left to lower right, like this:
I would tend to agree with them. Your thoughts?
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
I was raised in England in the 50s. If we were told to ‘tick’ something we had a small left to right diagonal from a short way up the left side of the box down to a short way along the bottom edge of the box, then a long diagonal from the bottom of the box, where the first little line ended, up to the top right hand corner. That was a tick – I’ve never done or thought of a tick as being one bottom left to top right line.
I moved to Australia in the 60s and finished school there, and an Australian tick was the same as the English tick. When I taught primary school we used and taught the same symbol.
Since I’ve lived in the US as an adult, I’ve rarely see an American use a tick, mostly if there is a box it is Xed.
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A “tick” in the UK looks like your illustration. I’ve never seen a simple diagonal limne used. An “X” instead maybe 🙂
In these hurried days, who has time to form a tick using two lines? I remember seeing my busy schoolteacher marking my work with a single diagonal line, by which she meant a tick. If it was not carefully placed, it could have been mistaken for the big red strike-through diagonal line which would have signified that a section of the work was factually wrong or unacceptably poor. (I fear it often was!)
I think the is-a-tick/check-one-line-or-two debate boils down to whether the person drawing it is the rushing and carefree type or the careful, slightly more pedantic type.
The phrases ‘check mark’ and ‘check box’ are increasingly being seen by UK eyes in MS365 and similar suites of software, so we know what they mean. Not that I have encountered UK people using those expressions.
My guess is that the definition of both words has been somewhat liberalized to include a wider variety of mark than the original words denoted. The intent of the mark has taken precedence over its execution. But, yes, traditionally, a “check” in American is the image you post. For example, Wikipedia claims that the check mark in the Winn-Dixie (grocery store) logo dates from its acquisition of the smaller Kwik-Chek chain of stores.
there’s another, Australian sense of “tick”, that means credit. to buy something “on tick” means to buy using a credit card or similar. I think this sense derived from how a bartender might run a tab for a patron by marking a piece of paper to indicate how many drinks someone had had.
this sense was in the music press a few years ago when Amyl & The Sniffers released their first album, and they had to explain what the song “Gacked on Tick” was about
That meaning isn’t particularly Australian. It’s in the latest edition of Chambers not marked as Australian, and I think it’s been around in the UK for a very long time
That takes me back. I haven’t heard anyone referring to buying something ‘on tick’ since about the 1970s. I think people say ‘On credit’ or ‘Payment plan’ nowadays. Interesting that the phrase is still alive in Australia.
There was also buying on the never-never. Was that the same?
No, not the same. On tick means I’ll pay you later, the never-never is hire purchase – making periodic payments for a purchase, a bit like buying a house on a mortgage.
Yes, that looks like a tick to me, although, being left handed, I think I sometimes do the mirror image.
What I would describe as a tick is this: ✔
Petra.
Rarely hear, and never use, check to mean tick (in UK).
However, various uses of ticks and boxes. ‘Ticking all the boxes’ when a process has to be methodically followed. ‘Ticks all the boxes’ means it’s got everything I want (“This holiday villa I’ve found ticks all the boxes”). On a more negative note, ‘tick box exercise’ means a worthless administrative event that is designed to satisfy some regulation or make the people doing it look good but will actually result in no meaningful change or improvement (eg annual employee survey run by HR).
Your image is of a British tick. I have no opinion on whether it’s also an American check mark.
It is.
It looks as though Buffa’s ticket booking system is provided by Future Ticketing, an Irish company (with at least one office in the UK) who may have written that copy.