Than - English editing

Traditional grammar holds that personal pronouns following than should be in the subjective rather than the objective case: he is smaller than she rather than he is smaller than her. This is based on analyzing than as a conjunction with the personal pronoun (‘she’) standing in for a full clause: he is smaller than she is. However, it is arguable that than in this context is not a conjunction but a preposition, grammatically similar to words like with, between, and for. If it is a preposition, the personal pronoun is objective: he is smaller than her is standard in just the same way as, for example, I work with her is standard (not I work with she) . Whatever the grammatical analysis, the evidence confirms that sentences like he is smaller than she are uncommon in modern English and only ever found in formal contexts , on the other hand, are almost universally accepted.