Grammar Girl Here

Today's topic is which pronoun to use after the word THAN, as in, nobody is more excited

about the Grammar Girl book than I. Or is it than me? Listen up, because guest writer

Charles Carson is going to explain. A few years ago around Easter, I saw a television

ad for Cadbury Cream Eggs that said of the Cadbury bunny, no bunny knows Easter better than

him. Well, I appreciated the obvious word play substituting no bunny knows for nobody

knows. I was struck by the pronoun used at the end of the sentence. Remember, pronouns

such as him and he come in different forms depending on whether the person or thing

is the subject, the one doing the action, or the object, the target of the action. He

is a subject pronoun and him is an object pronoun. With that in mind, let's look at the slogan

in question. No bunny knows Easter better than him. I was taught long ago that THAN in

this sentence is a conjunction, that is, it connects to complete sentences. Here, it

connects the first sentence, no bunny knows Easter better, to an implied second sentence,

the Cadbury bunny knows Easter. To form the entire thought, no bunny knows Easter better than

he knows Easter. Using this interpretation, I believe that the sentence required the subject

pronoun, he, no bunny knows Easter better than he, not the object pronoun him, because the

pronoun took the place of the subject in the implied second sentence, the bunny. Little

did I know that I'd stumbled into a controversy that's been hotly debated since the 18th century,

is THAN always a conjunction, or is it sometimes a preposition? Remember, a preposition is

a word that combines with a noun or pronoun to form a phrase that modifies an object or

action, as in the prepositional phrases before class, by the book, and behind him.

The noun or pronoun coupled with a preposition is called the object of the preposition. So

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