I’m feeling somewhat better today, not quite 100% yet, but making progress. Had some beers at the Car Wash last night and a good long chat with the ex. I have a better understanding and appreciation of her feelings and I can honestly say I wish her nothing but the best in her quest to fulfill her dreams. Some things are just not meant to be, but if you can salvage something positive out of a failed relationship, you have a net gain in the end. Doesn’t always feel that way but letting go of the emotion and embracing reality is a big step forward for me and my mental health.
There is always something good to eat in this town anyway. I’ll be alright.
So what’s up with the weird lumps on your left calf? Thought you were gonna talk about those.
HaHa, yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. Those are varicose veins. My mom had them too. No pain, just ugly as hell. Comes with the other symptoms of old age…like mismatched shoes.
<https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/varicose-veins/symptoms-causes/syc-20350643>
On second glance, I noticed your shoes were different, too. Was that the point of the post title?
My dad had varicose veins. He had a lot of them, fairly early in life, but I don’t recall them jutting so far out of the skin. He went in for surgery to have them removed; this was back when I was in grade school.
Yeah, I slipped on mismatched shoes this morning. That’s what the title was alluding to.
My veins are popping ugly, that’s for sure. No pain though, so I’m lucky in that regard.
On a language note regarding your post title: “different than” is used in front of clauses. Otherwise, Americans say “X is different from Y” and Brits say “X is different to Y.”
different from (US):
Your cat is different from my cat in many ways.
This ice cream tastes different from the last ice cream.
different to (UK):
Harry’s wand was different to Ron’s.
A Cornish pasty is different to an empanada.
different than (US and UK):
The results were different than I expected.
(“I expected” = clause, there different than)
A clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb in it. A clause can be as short as two words: Jenny slept. It can also be longer: Mark looked at the incoming data and trembled. (1 subject [Mark]; 1 compound predicate [looked, trembled])
Alas!
“there different than)” should be
“therefore different than“
Don’t know what happened to that final quotation mark. Yikes.
Interesting. I honestly thought I was just using a well-known colloquialism –I had no idea I was making a grammatical faux pax by saying “different than”. I’m not about to engage in a debate with an English wizard like yourself, but I will drop this Merriam-Webster link that seems to support my usage, at least way back when.
<https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/different-from-or-different-than>
“untroubled by information on semi-literate 18th-century grammarians and the mysterious mating habits of the comparative adjective.”
Ha ha. I can smell the descriptivism from here. Then again, the rules I quoted are actually rooted in descriptivism as well, i.e., in how the language is actually used.
(descriptivism = looking at how things are without judging; prescriptivism = telling you how things ought to be, i.e., prescribing)
So the MW article concludes:
If you don’t give a fig for what nitpickers think about your language use, proceed with different than or different from depending on how you feel.
If you give a fig, or part of a fig, use different from, except when beginning a clause, or when to do so would sound terrible.
If you are British, or would like people to think that you spent enough time in the United Kingdom for it to have influenced your approach to language, use different to whenever you feel like it.
This is pretty close to what I said, with some subtle differences, like the implication that the British “different to” can be used in front of a clause, which is not really the case in actual British English.
Note the article says “If you don’t give a fig” versus “If you give a fig.” I align with the “give a fig” crowd, so the second sentence, quoted above, comes closest to where I stand.
Note, too, that the article, in giving this advice, is being very subtly prescriptivist. This is something I’ve argued in the past: descriptivism is actually a form of, or subset of, prescriptivism.
And for what it’s worth, the Chicago Manual of Style (my go-to reference), section 5.195, says the following regarding what comes after “different”:
different (adj.): from (but when a dependent clause follows different, the conjunction than is a defensible substitute for from what: “movies today are different than they were in the fifties”)
Just so you know I don’t just pull this stuff out of my ass. CMOS doesn’t mention different to because it deals primarily with American English.
Wow I love reading the comments instead…🤣 I remember my late Texan husband, an English teacher in Korea, who was a Mensa member for having an IQ of 145, I used to asked him about my gramnar…he never corrected me unless I asked because as he said, there is no perfect English in the world..hehe…that even his mother would say, ” “fixin’ my laundry”, “fixin’ my breakfast”….so and so…Texan accent…t’was fun learning tho’, . He was the most knowledgeable person I have known in my life , once a winner in Jeopardy Show..but the humblest of all the humbles…I can ask him every tiny thing in the world…
That at the end grammar is not anymore important between us but how he tried to understand what I was trying to say.
Kev, this has been an interesting voyage into the realm of grammatical correctness. As I mentioned, I always thought “different than” was common usage, but I can’t say why I believed that. Just the way I heard it in my head I suppose. Anyway, I changed “than” to “from” in the title as my concession of defeat in this debate. In other words, the headline is different from before.
BW, yeah it says a lot when the comment section is more interesting than the post! Still, sweet memories of your husband. Thanks for sharing. He lives on in your heart!