And now, “then,” and “than”

November 11th, 2008 at 07:00am Barry Wood

The first definition of the adverb “then” (rhymes with “when”) is “at that time.” It can refer to the past (”Life was harder then”) or the future (”Life will be much better then”). ”Then” can be any time except now, although they do work together in “now and then” to mean “occasionally.”

“Then” also can be used “with conjunctive force” to mean “in that case; therefore; accordingly,” as in “If you decide not to go, then I’ll have to ask someone else.”

Too often it gets confused with the actual conjunction “than” (rhymes with “pan”), which is principally used for comparisons. Whenever you’re rating two things or groups, and one is more, less, bigger, taller, heavier, prettier and so on, you need “than,” not “then.”

Here’s an example using both:

“I once thought no one could talk more than she does, but then I met you.”

If a sentence contains “more” or “less” (or “fewer”) or a word ending in “-er,” there probably should be a “than” nearby.

Entry Filed under: perplexing pairs