>>
Actually, Mike was right. It should be "me." If you use "I," you need to follow it with "am": >>
>>Anytime I say "someone is older than I am", I will usually say, "John is 20 years older than I am", as opposed to "John is 20 years older than I". The latter sounds a bit stuffy. It's correct, but (IMO) stuffy.
>>
>>However, "John is 20 years older than me" isn't correct.
>
>After I typed my message, but before I hit send, I went and checked. Both "than me" and "than I am" are correct. "Than I" is not, though it's often used with the "am" implied.
>
>Tamar
Not sure where you got the part about the implied "am" being incorrect but I certainly never heard that one. I think both Turabian and Strunk find "than I" acceptable (though I admit I haven't looked it up in 45 years ) and "than me" not.
I think the me is only "acceptable" because of common, improper usage. I guess it is justified grammatically in the case of comparison of adjective descriptions.
Tracy's example shows the problem when the pronoun is definitely an object.
Mary likes John better than me.
Mary likes John better than I.
But, as I've said before, I forgive anything as long as the sentence does not include "try and" meaning "try to"
( frankly I did kind of the double-take on the "went and checked" above <g> )
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
