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This link arrived in the e-mail this morning from a journalist in France with the message "We can pay our taxes on line and now this!" Being a curious journalist, I checked it out. My first reaction was to believe it was legitimate, quickly followed by serious doubts, then a sense of wonder that some of us are so quick to believe strange things about our neighbours.

French elections always leave me, as an American-Swiss who lived in Paris for seven years, with a nagging sense that they really are different from me. Of course they are: a French person writing the title of this post would have ended it with three dots, no spaces … In decent English, we use that writing mechanism only to mean we’ve deleted something, and we space out those dots. The French use it for an intellectual pause, a way of saying you and I both know what we mean and don’t have to say it. It’s a style adopted by many English-speakers who have lived in France or Switzerland too long. I used to think that chic little touch made the French odd. Having lived near them for years I now think we’re all odd. Who invented three dots anyway?

An American journalist and writer who has spent many years in France wrote to me at the end of last week, confirming that the French are different: "What I loved about this campaign was the total lack of domestic conflict issues – this would never work in America. Sarkozy

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