American English Official Grammar Reference Book

[William Ryan]

I hesitate to join in a discussion which arises from a query about US 
usage but I would disagree slightly with Paul Gallagher's note on 
'different to/from/than insofar as it relates British English. I think 
any careful British editor would accept only 'different from' at almost 
any level of publication. 'Different to' is commonly heard in British 
colloquial English but would still probably be corrected by any British 
school teacher of English; many would regard it as being 'uneducated'. 
'Different than' is occasionally heard in Britain but I suspect sounds 
American to most and is unlikely to be used by educated British 
speakers, although the OED gives a substantial list of writers who have 
used this construction.

Of course, editors and authors of style books can hardly escape the 
orthodoxies of their youth, and recommended 'good practice' in written 
English will commonly differ from current colloquial usage even of 
educated English speakers in any part of the English-speaking world. I 
went to school at a time when a split infinitive would be seized upon by 
a teacher as a vulgar error. Even now my editorial blue pencil twitches 
involuntarily when I see one, despite my recognition of the historical 
and linguistic absurdity of the convention and the awful contortions one 
sometimes has to perform to observe it. We may have no Academie to 
legislate in these matters, as has been pointed out, but the conditioned 
responses of old style education (e.g. from a slap on the hand if you 
got it wrong), the fear of social solecism (for British English remember 
Pygmalion/My Fair Lady and the still not entirely forgotten U/nonU 
debate), or the dread of a sneering review, have strong normative 
influences.

Will Ryan
 


Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
> Deborah Hoffman wrote:
>
>> I was also going to suggest the Columbia guide. In addition to
>> grammar, it contains valuable information on varying levels of
>> register, something that tends to plague a non-native speaker of any
>> language, as well as on inclusive usage.
>
> I hope the paper version is better than the one available online.
>
> I did a cursory review of several dozen entries and found them 
> generally superficial and uninsightful, missing obvious points that 
> would be of interest to the reader. Moreover, the purpose seemed more 
> descriptive than prescriptive, and they often took the position that 
> whatever a lot of people did was fine by them, even if a literate 
> reader should know better.
>
> <http://www.bartleby.com/68/>
>
> Example:
>
> <http://www.bartleby.com/68/37/1837.html>
> different from, different than, different to
>
> These three have been usage items for many years. All are Standard and 
> have long been so (different to is limited to British English, 
> however), but only different from seems never to meet objections: She 
> is different from her mother in many ways. He feels different from the 
> way he did yesterday. You look different from him. Different than has 
> been much criticized by commentators but is nonetheless Standard at 
> most levels except for some Edited English. Consider She looks 
> different than [she did] yesterday. He’s different than me (some 
> additional purist discomfort may arise here). You look different than 
> he [him]. The problem lies in the assumption that than should be only 
> a subordinating conjunction (requiring the pronouns that follow to be 
> the nominative case subjects of their clauses), and not a preposition 
> (requiring the pronouns that follow to be the objective case objects 
> of the preposition). But Standard English does use than as both 
> preposition and conjunction: She looks different than me is Standard 
> and so is She looks different than I [do]. And with comparative forms 
> of adjectives, than occurs with great frequency: She looks taller 
> [older, better, thinner, etc.] than me [than I do]. Still, best advice 
> for Formal and Oratorical levels: stick with different from.
>

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