I read this sentence recently in a book, and it immediately struck me as awkward and incorrect.
Curiosity is different than other ways of being fulfilled…
Shouldn’t it be “different from“?
Different from, different than…what’s the difference (pardon the pun)?
The word than is a preposition that usually follows an adjective when making a comparison between people, items, or conditions. Examples include more than, less than, better than, worse than, colder than, sweeter than—you get the idea.
However, different than can also be correctly used in a sentence such as the following:
College life is different than I expected.
So, what is the distinction between this example and the first one that uses different than incorrectly? A clause instead of a noun follows the word different.
General Guideline:
If a noun follows different, use from:
Curiosity is different from other ways of being fulfilled…
If a clause (has a subject and verb) follows different, use than:
College life is different than I expected.
See also Dictionary.com’s explanation:
How do I know when to use different from, different than, different to?
Olumide:
Janet is not seated. (???)
“Compare with” and “compare to” are basically the same.
please kindly correct this :
what is difference between compare with & compare to
please kindly correct this for me:
should it be : Janet is not on seat/ Janet just steps out
Your reasoning here is nonsense. Short of saying “not the same”, can anything express inequality more than “different”? In your examples it appears most of the comparisons involve some property that might be measurable, at least in principle, but even that’s a stretch (how do you measure “worse”?). Being “different” may be quantitatively different than being “colder” or “sweeter” or even “better” but not qualitatively. In fact, all of those words are used to describe a difference.
You need to come up with a better reason because as it stands this is style not grammar (and most likely a pet peeve).
[Editor's Note: This comment refers to a previous version of this post.]