<p>Is "different than" considered ungrammatical on the SAT? When is the use of different than/from appropriate?</p>
<p>Well, according to me “different from” sounds right and not the other.</p>
<p>Google tells me…
“different from” - 188 000 000 results.
“different than” - 68 200 000 results.
Therefore, “different from” is correct.</p>
<p>What about a gramatical justification for this matter?</p>
<p>Well.</p>
<p>I knew the logical reason for this question, but i looked up the grammatical.</p>
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Use …different FROM…almost all the time. Technically, …different FROM… simply precedes a noun or pronoun. How easy is that?</p>
<p>ex.1. Jack is so different FROM Tom, his brother – Tom’s about as bright as a burned - out light bulb! (Here, FROM precedes TOM, a noun, so, of course, FROM is correct, not THAN.)</p>
<p>Use… different THAN…right in front of a clause ( a group of words with with its own subject and verb. Many times you will see several different clauses in one sentence. Nevertheless, you only want to focus on the clause that follows …different THAN…) </p>
<p>ex. 1. The job was quite different THAN what I imagined.</p>
<p>I always thought “different from” was used most of the time: </p>
<p>This apple is different from that one.</p>
<p>but if you have an clause after the phrase, you use “different than”:</p>
<p>This apple is different than I expected.</p>
<p>Something like that would be too ambiguous to test if “different than” could be acceptable in a certain instance, so “different from” would probably be the right answer to any question asked on the SAT.</p>