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As, Then As
What's Better Than 'Than'?
By Evan Jenkins
Words to live by: When we start a comparison with "as," we have to stay with it. We shouldn't, for instance, write "Americans can pay twice as much for drugs in the United States than people pay in Canada."
Maybe "for drugs in the United States" was a fatal distraction. No one -- ? - would say "twice as much than people pay." Nature and sense (not to mention the rules of syntax) require "as much ... as people pay."
With no serious distraction, things nonetheless went similarly awry in a report about the apparent effect of gas exploration on a species of wild birds in the rural West; the passage said of the birds' courtship areas near the gas wells, "four times as many are inactive than active." Nature and sense again: "as many are inactive as active." And to be balanced and smooth, we can add a syllable: "as are active." (CJR, November/December 2004)
CJR
