How do you know when to use “different than” or “different from”? If you’re at book club and you announce, “This book is different from anything I’ve read before,” it will have the same meaning as if you said, “This book is different than anything I’ve read before.” In most casual contexts, these phrases are interchangeable for comparing and contrasting topics.
But there are certain usages when one preposition is the better choice. If you want to compare two nouns or pronouns, use “different from.” For example: “My haircut looks different from Rachel’s haircut.” We’re comparing the appearance of one haircut to another.
“Different than” is acceptable when an additional word makes it awkward to use “from,” or when it’s introducing a clause: “I had a different experience than you did” or “She expected the cheesecake to be different than it was.”
Some grammar sticklers argue that “different than” is incorrect because the use of “than” implies a comparison between two objects. It usually follows a comparative adjective, as in “larger than” or “more beautiful than.” Other comparative adjectives include “higher” and “better” (not to be confused with superlative adjectives such as “highest, “best,” and “most”).
However, this grammar rule is outdated, and “different than” can be found in published works dating back to the mid-19th century. In fact, Charles Darwin used examples of both “different than” and “different from” in his landmark 1859 publication On the Origin of Species:
“Natural selection may modify and adapt the larva of an insect to a score of contingencies, wholly different from those which concern the mature insect.”
“What can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle?”
These examples technically swap how we use the prepositional phrases today, but, as we know, grammar guidelines shift over time. However, there is one more wrinkle to the issue at hand: British English uses “different to,” but never “different than.” If your audience is British, stick with “different from.”
