I was writing that post in my head when walking George and I began an argument with myself - with George originally but he lost interest very quickly - over whether it should be 'smarter than me' or 'smarter than I'. In my post I got round the problem by writing 'smarter than I am' but
I think smarter than me sounds better. But does it matter?
There was only one thing to do: I consulted Mr Fowler and his handy guide to English usage. (I wouldn't trust the internet on an important topic like this.)
According to Mr Fowler it depends whether you're using 'than' as a conjunction or a preposition. If as a conjunction then it's I as you are 'implying the ellipsis of am after I'.
To wit, if you write 'smarter than I' you're pretending 'am' is there.
If than is being used as a preposition then it's 'smarter than me'. Mr Fowler agrees this is less formal but perfectly acceptable.
Mr Fowler goes on to say you can avoid the problem by using a reflexive pronoun, in this case, 'smarter than myself', and I'm sure you'll agree with me and the good gentleman when we say this is 'less than satisfactory.'
In answer to the question I posed earlier - does it matter? - by now you've probably come to the conclusion you don't care whether it does or not. But being a college-educated woman I am happy.
6 comments:
I'm glad for you.
Are you okay?
Smarter than myself sounds weird .
It's "smarter than what I am" , innit .
I am fine, thank you, Sharon!
I fink you hit it on the 'ead there, sonata.
I couldn't care less what Mr Fowler says. As long as it looks right and sounds right and makes sense, that's good enough for me.
Hi Liz, Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment.
I did not go to college but still manage to catch grammatical errors at least sometimes!
That's Husband's viewpoint too, Nick. But I found it interesting.
College is over-rated, Granny Marigold. We absorb good grammar by osmosis often.
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