A Word Please
by June Casagrande

There was a phone message waiting for me, which was weird because I was at a bookstore. I don't work at the bookstore. I don't have friends who work at the bookstore. I do live a short distance from this particular bookstore, but not so close that its employees would answer my home phone. Someone had called the bookstore to leave a message -- for me.

Yet before the bookstore employee delivering the message had a chance to finish her sentence, I already knew what the message would be. "A lady who read the article …" the employee began. And I heard it coming.

"It's about 'than me,' right?" I asked.

"Yeah," the bookstore employee said.

My Vroman's appearance had been preceded by a little write-up in a local paper -- a lighthearted article that touched on everything from my new book to my new husband, my TV viewing habits and my cats. In the very casual tone consistent with the whole interview, the reporter had asked whether my friends worry about making grammar mistakes when they talk in front of me.

"Oh, they don't give a d@#! what I think," I replied. "They're all smarter than me, anyway."

I didn't expect those words to appear verbatim in my local paper, but they did. The next day, the reporter forwarded to me four e-mails she'd received.

"Surely," one very cantankerous reader wrote, "Ms. Casagrade did NOT say, 'They're all smarter than me anyway.'"

"I wonder if she'll correct herself at the book signing," another wrote.

Their issue had to do with my choice of "me" instead of "I" following "than." Technically, "than" is first and foremost a conjunction, and conjunctions introduce whole clauses -- stuff like "I am." That's different from the job of a preposition, which takes an object -- think "with me."

So, according to the traditional rules of formal grammar, I should have said "than I" instead of "than me." Yet I don't feel chastened, because any of them had read the book, they would have noticed that a whole chapter is dedicated to this issue. In fact, the chapter is titled "He is smarter than me."

In it, I explain that many grammar authorities are softening their stance on this issue. Others have long supported the choice of "than me" in informal usage.

"Traditionally," writes Bryan Garner in "Garner's Modern American Usage," "grammarians have considered 'than' a conjunction, not a preposition- -hence He is taller than I (am). … That view has had its detractors, including Eric Partridge, who preferred the objective case. … Even William Safire plumps for the objective case."

Garner cites Safire citing the poet Milton and even Shakespeare: "a man no mightier than myself or me" in "Julius Caesar."

Garner is more conservative, but even he says the "than me" construction is permissible in "the most relaxed, colloquial contexts."

I oppose nitpicking (which is lucky for the reader who spelled my last name Casagrade). The reason: When we run around expecting people to say "My friends are smarter than I anyway," we're failing to see the forest for the trees. Grammar, to me, is a fascinating study of the mechanics of language. It's not mere pedantry. When we forget that, we risk alienating everyone who doesn't want to sound like a blowhard in everyday conversation.

Of course, some might argue that I, someone who writes about grammar, should have considered the newspaper interview to be a situation that called for formal usage. So in the future, I guess I'll just have to make my tone clearer by finding a word even less formal than "d@#!.".

-- June Casagrande is the author of "Mortal Syntax" and "Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies." She can be reached at word@grammarsnobs.com.