Dragaera

Literary Disappointments (was: The LKH thing)

Mon Feb 17 10:22:21 PST 2003

> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Mark A Mandel wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, John Klein wrote:
> >
> > #points and question marks in the same sentence, the phrase
> "different to",
> >
> > No argument with most of what he said, but "different to" is normal
> > British usage where USAians say "different from" or "different than".
> >
> > -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
> >    Philological Busybody
> >    a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
> >
> >
> My edition (2nd) of Fowler's agrees that "different to" is acceptable
> but cites the OED as sayiing "different than" is "now usual".  He says the
> objection to "different to" comes from the incorrectness of "differs to".
> It certainly sounds wrong in American English - what's Twain's comment,
> England and America, two countries separated by a language?
>
> - Philip
>

Nitpick: common language  (one of his best quotes too)

Another favorite:

"Verbing weirds language."
   --- Calvin and Hobbs

W