Spelling, with a bit of titillation

Dusty Evski
1 min readJul 13, 2017

It’s driving me crazy how often I see people using ‘then’ or ‘than’ in the wrong context. Isn’t this taught in school anymore?! These are not the same word. And they are not interchangeable.
Come on! It’s not so difficult! Here are the rules, and some examples of usage:

‘THEN’ has four possible categories —

1) sequence in time:
“First, we dawdled, and THEN we diddled.”

2) point in time:
“Oh yes… that thing you did, just THEN.”

3) if/then statements:
“IF you’ll lick mine, THEN I’ll lick yours.”

4) to mean ‘in that case’:
“Well alright THEN! I like it!”

‘THAN’ has three possible categories —

1) comparisons:
“Mine is much larger THAN his.” (duh)
“She flirted more THAN her sister.”
“Now you’re wearing fewer clothes THAN you were.”

2) ‘rather than’:
“I prefer doggy, rather THAN missionary.”

3) ‘other than’:
“What did you expect, other THAN the squishy goo?”

That’s it! There may be one or two minor exceptions to these rules, but these are the biggies! What, it wasn’t taught this way in your school?
PLEASE, just read through the examples as many times as you need until they feel familiar.

And you may copy and paste this anywhere.
Thank you.

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