Than - in comparisons :


Taller than I / me ?? :

When making a comparison with than do we end with a subject form or object form, taller than I/she or taller than me/her. The correct response is taller than I/she.

We are looking for the subject form:

He is taller than I am/she is tall.

Except we leave out the verb in the second clause, am or is.

Some good writers, however, will argue that the word than should be allowed to function as a preposition.

If we can say He is tall like me/her, then (if than could be prepositional like like) we should be able to say, He is taller than me/her. It's an interesting argument, but — for now, anyway — in formal, academic prose, use the subject form in such comparisons.

We also want to be careful in a sentence such as I like him better than she/her. The she would mean that you like this person better than she likes him; the her would mean that you like this male person better than you like that female person. To avoid ambiguity and the slippery use of than, we could write I like him better than she does or I like him better than I like her.


More than / over ?? :

In the United States, they usually use more than in countable numerical expressions meaning in excess of or over. In England, there is no such distinction. For instance, in the U.S., some editors would insist on more than 40,000 traffic deaths in one year, whereas in the UK, over 40,000 traffic deaths would be acceptable. Even in the U.S., however, you will commonly hear over in numerical expressions of age, time, or height:

His sister is over forty.

She's over six feet tall.

We've been waiting well over two hours for her.