>>>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> )

I will try and remember that one ;-) Maybe when I am talking to a real-a-tor....

One of my favorites in the language is that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. I got another chuckle about that pulled up behind a gasoline truck just now. (See usage note at the end -- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inflammable). Actually I was on my way home from the grocery store, where I bought few enough items to go through the "25 items or less" line ;-)