Different Than vs. Different From

I see the usage "different than" pop up occasionally, and it bemuses me. (Think of "This is different than what I expected" or "Her coat is different than mine.") It seems off and wrong somehow in comparison to "different from." Let me explain the difference between the two, and why I recommend using "different from."

The Difference Between the Two

The word "than" implies a graded, comparative relationship between two things. One would say "John is bigger than his younger brother" or "The distance from Minneapolis to Dallas is greater than the distance from Minneapolis to St. Paul." And in both sentences, comparisons are being made using a common scale. In the first sentence, size is being compared, and in the second, distance is being compared.

In contrast, the word "from" implies a relationship of difference that doesn't necessarily involve a comparison. You could say two adjectives are different from each other...say, purple and financial. But are they different than each other? Which is more X than the other? And if they were being compared, what is the common scale being used? You could say purple is more colorful than financial, but you wouldn't use the word financial to describe the color of something. So, really, there's no comparison being made. Therefore, the phrase "different than" makes little sense.

The Bryan Garner Take

As it turns out, not everyone is as exacting on this point as I am. Bryan A. Garner, one of the most erudite and published of wordsmiths in the English language, agrees with me to a point; in his tome Garner's Modern English Usage, 4th ed., he writes: "Than implies a comparison, i.e., a matter of degree; but differences are ordinarily qualitative, not quantitative, and the adjective different is not strictly comparative. Hence writers should generally prefer different from."

But unlike me, Garner allows more nuance, stating that idiomatic usage is acceptable. He cites, as an example, "This designer's fashions are typically quite different for men than for women." Perhaps given more context, this usage may work, but I see this sentence as just awkward and unhelpful; it makes me want to ask, "how are these fashions different?"

Further examples he cites show the term different than with the words separated from each other, as in "Life was a lot more different in the dense urban jungle of New York City than it was in the quiet countryside." I would potentially allow this. Changing than to from would make the second half of the sentence almost nonsensical; you'd have to make the change from what rather than just from.

What About "Different To"?

Here's a construction that rarely appears in American English, but is fairly common in British English. I'm not sure of the logic behind using the word "to" when you want to create a contrast of one thing against—and not a comparison to—another, but in British English, "different to" stands as an accepted construction. ("Patsy moved to a flat different to the one she had before.") If I were editing for a British readership, I would allow "different to," but for an American readership, I would propose "different from" instead.

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Photo credit: "Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood" by edenpictures is licensed under CC BY 2.0.