Some common phrases are hard to tell apart. Here is a brief guide to a few common trouble-makers.
Compared To vs. Compared With
When making an analogy to something of an entirely different class, use compare to.
He compared leading a company through recessionary times to steering an ocean liner through a storm.
Compared to moving to a new neighborhood, pulling up an old oak tree was easy.
When comparing things that belong to the same class, use compare with.
When compared with tsunamis, the waves the surfers were riding seemed puny.
Compared with the great flu epidemic of 1918, the swine-flu outbreak seemed insignificant.
Different From vs. Different Than
Use different from and you will not make a mistake. It is a rare instance when different than is the right choice.
This year’s program is different from last year’s in that this year we had a belly dancer.
His approach to the problem is different from mine.
Note: In keeping with the general idea of increasing the number of verbs in our sentences, you can usually use the verb differs in place of different from.
This year’s program differs from last year’s.
His approach differs from mine.
Note that these have the benefit of being shorter, although they still rely on from for their structure.
More Important vs. More Importantly
The key thing to remember here is that important is an adjective and importantly is an adverb. That means important describes a thing or situation and importantly describes an action or state of being. Thus it would be incorrect to write at the beginning of a sentence, more importantly, if you are describing a situation.
He always gets to work 15 minutes late. More important, all of his projects are being turned in late.
More important, they had stopped living at that address before the taxes were assessed.
The previous example could be rendered more clear, even if a bit longer, by writing
More important is the fact that they had stopped living at that address before the taxes were assessed.
The adverbial phrase more importantly refers to something that occurs in a more important manner.
He viewed his position in the organization more importantly than other people did.
Their report considered sun storms more importantly than fossil-fuel emissions in analyzing the causes of global warming.
What other words and phrases do you wonder about? Write to me at lizd@worktalk.com.