Buki Box

Which pronoun feels right to you: "than us" or "than we"?

There will be times when you say something that you think sounds fine, but the audience reacts as if you'd raked your fingernails across a blackboard. For example, which of the following do you prefer?

1. "Who can do it better than us?"

2. "Who can do it better than we?"

This is a no-win situation. Option 2 is the grammatically correct one*, but for most people in the room, it sounds snooty at best and weirdly wrong at worst. And for the snoots in the room, Option 1 produces scowls of disapproval.

Well, you can happy both parties.

Consider this: Try reiterating the verb (usually an auxiliary verb).

• "Who can do it better than we can?"

By reiterating can at the end, the non-snoots now feel uncomfortable using the wrong pronoun, us, and opt instead for the correct nominative pronoun, we. And the snoots smile in approval. Like after ordering pizza at my house, everyone is much pleased.

See how much better the following statements are by reiterating the verb?

• Bill is faster than him.  Bill is faster than he.  Bill is faster than he is. 

• I'm taller than them.  I'm taller than they.  I'm taller than they are. 

• He doesn't do it as well as me.  He doesn't do it as well as I.  He doesn't do it as well as I do. 

• He cooks like her. He cooks like she. He cooks like she cooks.

Notice in that last example, we could insert an auxiliary verb if we didn't want to reiterate a regular verb like cook.

• He cooks like her. He cooks like she. He cooks like she does.

Stuff that in your buki box.

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