XX is different (than, from) YY?

[Mwita Chacha]

This sentence I saw in an online US newspaper's commentary puzzled me: ''I chose this dress because it's different than the traditional wedding gown you see at every wedding.'' It presumably might perplex anyone whose knowledge about the word ''than'' is that it is a conjunction used after a comparative adjective or adverb to introduce the second element or clause of an unequal comparison as in ''Maria is taller than her sister,'' ''He paints more beautifully than his friend,'' and ''Their neighborhood is more dangerous to walk at nights than ours.''

[Joe Carillo]

I’ve grown so accustomed to using “different from” instead of “different than” in this sentence that you presented, “I chose this dress because it’s (different from, different than) the traditional wedding gown you see at every wedding,” that I don’t think I’ll ever have reason to gravitate to using “different than” no matter what the grammatical situation might be. Having said that, however, I must acknowledge for the record here that this is simply a personal choice—my personal idiom, so to speak. Most grammar authorities in both American English and British English maintain that there’s nothing wrong with using “different than”—and even “different to”—in such sentence constructions. Indeed, alongside “different from,” both “different than” and “different to” have been used by well-known writers since the 17th century to convey the same sense.

Check out the exhaustive, very robust disquisition on these alternative usages by Stan Carey, a scientist turned writer-editor and swivel-chair linguist, in his blog “Sentence first.” I’ll take his as the last word on the subject.