Job Discussion Forums

[Hogbear]

I'm curious whether teachers here treat than as a preposition or as a conjunction:

"She is taller than I (am)."
or
"She is taller than me."

Most style guides these days seem to go with the former construction (conjunction), but I think it often sounds stilted�especially in speech, and especially when static verbs are used. In the above example, I'd argue that the focus of the sentence is taller, and I guess my beef is, why clutter up the sentence with yet another static verb construction ("I am") when you can just package things up nicely with the pronoun me?

But if an active verb is used, it sounds wrong to use me as the pronoun:

"She sings better than I (do)."
not
"She sings better than me."

Any thoughts?

[johnslat]

Dear Hogbear,
It would depend, I'd say, on the context. Here's an example I used to give my students:

My wife likes ice cream better than I (do).

My wife likes ice cream better than (she likes) me.

Regards,
John

[dduck]

<furiously copying this down>

Iain

[mjed9]

I'm not sure if your example is grammatically sound

Better is a "comparative adjective" and therefore shouldn't be used to modify the verb "like".

Surley it is better English to say

My wife likes ice cream more than she likes me

My wife likes ice cream more than I/me.

High Brow English dictates that we should always say I when comparing myself to another but this is an old rule and you have to take into consideration if there is any loss of meaning (which I don't think there is).

However if you are comparing your wife's likes then I think you need to be more explicit (as per the first example and repeat "she likes")

[Hogbear]

John,

I was going to mention your example, but I didn't want to add another wrinkle to my post. If the context calls for "than I" for its meaning then, yes, as you and mjed point out, you should use it. Also, like is an active verb, which sort of fits my theory that active verbs + than usually call for than to be treated as a conjunction�just as in my "She sings better than I (sing/do)" example. "She sings better than me" sounds wrong.

But my concern here is with static verbs such as is, are, and to be. Whatever the rule is, just as "She sings better than me" sounds wrong, I think "She's taller than I" sounds wrong.

Also, if we use than I in "She's taller than me," it tends to sound incomplete: "She's taller than I am." Um... than I am what? "Than I am tall"?

I know there's an entry in the M-W Guide to Usage on this, which I plan to check out Monday.

[leeroy]

Just to throw in another wrinkle...

"Rather than go to the pub, we decided to go home instead". What is "than" here?

[dduck]

When you use expressions like "it doesn't sound right to me" you are comparing language to your idiolect. If everyone used this as their judgement base we'll end up going round in circles, arguing "that doesn't feel right to me" round and round, until we eventually fall off.

Perhaps, it would be better - more useful - to students (depending on their level) that there are various ways of expressing the same thing (i.e. not everyone agrees) and highlight some examples, while being careful to point out the 'standard' they'll be expected to produce for exams. Or you could just churn out what the text books say, and exams expect, even if it differs from what you'd naturally employ.

Iain

[dduck]

[Hogbear]

[dduck]

Okay, I'll cast my vote now. I think "than" is both. And a vote is the best I think you'll manage, as language won't show us a single winner.

Iain

[Hogbear]

Okay, here's what I've found:

WIT and Bernstein both treat than as a conjunction, thus the pronoun after it must match its antecedent: "He is taller than I" or "He is taller than I am" or "He is taller than I am tall." I can't find a ruling in Chicago or AP.

The authorities that allow the objective are Huddleston (Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) and the M-W Dictionary of English Usage. Huddleston calls the objective "informal yet still acceptable," and he notes that the objective is the only possibility in sentences in which the pronoun is followed by "both" or "all," as in "She is older than us both" (not "we both").

The M-W usage book has an interesting entry on than, saying it depends whether you treat it as a preposition (objective) or as a conjunction (nominative). It concludes with:

"Than is both a preposition and a conjunction. The preposition has never been wrong [...] In current usage, than is more often a conjunction than a preposition [...] The closer your writing is to speech, the more likely you are to choose the preposition."

[dduck]

A nice bit of research there Hogbear! Are you satisfied with the results?

Iain

[Hogbear]

For my purposes, grudgingly yes. I'm not a teacher (not yet); I'm a copy editor, and I work at a very conversational, bawdy men's magazine... so I'm going to stick to the objective unless confusion would result. ("She is taller than me"; but "She sings better than I sing (do).")

The reason I asked here is because I thought maybe teachers would want to stick to more "conversational" rules (when there isn't a clear rule).

I've gotta admit, this is a woolly one�even for someone like me, who pretends to have a firm grasp of English. Would you really teach both ways? Or would you maybe just pick one and stick with it? I can definitely see cases in which teachers would share both sides to students�in an industry such as mine, we have to come up with a consistent style rather quickly, whereas teachers would have more time to talk about this stuff.

I'm sure there are plenty more cases of "unsettled" grammar questions like this one, that I'm just not aware of.

[dduck]

[Hogbear]

Bill Walsh is a copy chief at the Washington Post, and he recently had this to say on the matter. There's also an interesting bit on less and fewer. This can be found at www.theslot.com

---------------------------------

Less wrong than you think

Do you get all worked up when you see a supermarket checkout lane labeled "10 items or less"?

Well, you shouldn't. Yeah, yeah, countable items are "fewer." But the sign doesn't say "10 or less items," and it doesn't necessarily mean "10 items or less [than 10 items]." I'm not always the most charitable reader, but I see "10 items or less" and I read "10 items or less [than that]." Problem solved. Besides, "10 items or fewer" sounds ridiculous.

An older dispute in the fun-with-implied-words genre involves than. Are you taller than I, or are you taller than me? Answer: Both. That's how short I am.

If you don't want to risk angering the purists, go ahead and be taller than I (am). But if you're a regular old tall person and not a tall professor of English, you probably didn't mean to imply the word am. You meant to say you're taller than me, and you're right. I don't mind being treated as an object.

William Safire also doesn't mind. Bryan Garner does mind, at least in anything but the most informal writing. The technical explanation (I had to look this up, of course) is that than is supposed to be a conjunction, not a preposition. Many people feel strongly about this. A high-school classmate of my wife's argued the point, and was disappointed that I didn't agree, when I met him at a recent class reunion. So file "than as a preposition" alongside "hopefully as a sentence adverb," "host as a verb" and "media and data as collective singular nouns" in the "correct, but use at your own risk" category.