You're fighting a losing battle.
Yes, Strunk and White reject different than, and I revere them, but they are getting sadly out of date in some areas. Fowler (1st edition) doesn't even discuss different than, but rejects the argument that "different from" must always be used and allows "different to."
But even the Shorter OED acknowledges that "different than, different to are often regarded as incorrect, though used by many well-known writers since the 17th cent." The Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage acknowledges that "different than is becoming increasingly more popular among careful writers when the object of the preposition is a clause..." Theodore Bernstein in The Careful Writer spends three pages on the discussion, acknowledging that "any writer who wishes to confine himself to different from will never be wrong, and--particularly if he has a closed mind on the subject--he need read no farther." But the farther does acknowledge that logic doesn't support the distinction, and that "we may yet allow exceptions [to different from], and be tolerant of than...it is sufficient to say that the word is a useful device to avoid awkwardness, cumbersomeness, and elaborate wastefulness with words. It may be that rules are not made to be broken, but neither are they made to enslave. To insist on different from regardless of the clumsiness it sometimes produces would be to let the horse ride the horseman."
But perhaps the final nail in the coffin is the New Fowler, 3rd edition. It says straightforwardly: "The commonly expressed view that different should only be followed by from and never by to or than is not supportable in the face of past and present evidence or of logic..." And indeed, he quotes the Oxford Guide to English Usage (which I don't own) as suggesting that in certain constructions different than is actually preferable to different from.
If you insist on continuing to use only different from, you will not be wrong (though you may write clumsily). But you will find precious little support within the authorities on modern usage if you try to prevent others from using different than in certain contexts. |
