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Which is correct? "She is older than me?" or "She is older than I?"
One of our number believes the first is correct because it sounds right.
Another of us believes the second is grammatically correct even though it sounds stiff and pompous.
Another of us believes the second is correct but ONLY if additional words are added, i.e., "She is older than I am."
Which is it word nerds?
I am with the person who avoids the controversy by going with "… I am."
The traditional word-nerd response is "… than I." (subject pronoun) But I agree that the tone sounds stuffy and maybe a little pompous. I can make a reaonable grammatical argument for "… than me" (disjunctive pronoun, used in tonic or emphatic positions) and, at the risk of being discredited forever, I would SAY "than me" in all informal speech and writing.
The loaded question and possibility for alienation cause me to repeat the verb or use a dummy verb in formal speech or writing in this situation.
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.[edit: added the following]
Here is a prior posting I made on a related topic: Disjunctive pronoun
For the skeptics out there about disjuntive pronouns, which of the following one-word responses would you select? Remember, this is a test.
"Which of you two ladies is younger?"
A. "I!"
B. "Me!"
C. "Her!"
D. "She!"
E. "What!?"
F. "Jerk!"
I've decided that both "...than I" and "...than me" are correct, depending on whether "than" is being used as a preposition or a...what would you call it? Some prepositions take nouns as their object, others verb phrases.
For example, "I came with them"; "with" is a preposition that has "them" as its object. Likewise "I'm into her", "I'm after you" and "She'll come to me".
But some prepositions are adverbial in their nature. "She ate before I was up"; "before" relates two verb phrases, not two nouns.
"Than" can be either way. If Tom is taller than Sherri, then he's taller than her....or he's taller than she is. If you're 45 and I'm 57, then you're younger than me, or younger than I am. Take your pick. And if you're younger than I am, you're equally well younger than I.
Come to think of it, this applies to "before", too; you can arrive before I did, or you can be before me. Maybe most or even all comparative prepositions—"before", "after", "above" and "below" and so forth—can relate both nouns and verb phrases.
"Taller than 
me or I) "
I would say it depends on context. If I was speaking out loud or writing it down, it would always be "me".
If I was taking an aptitude test (SAT, ACT, GRE ...) I would probably choose "I".
(note that both the first case has 'communication' as the operative mode, and the second seems to be about "scoring points")
Bob Bridges said:
Come to think of it, this applies to "before", too; you can arrive before I did, or you can be before me. Maybe most or even all comparative prepositions—"before", "after", "above" and "below" and so forth—can relate both nouns and verb phrases.
You raise a great question. I would count this as completely wrong, but might someone say:
"Tom arrived before I." One could make the same claim — that the I is the subject of the elided "I arrived."
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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