The Capital Letter - by BerlinBear
Do you not watch much American TV or films? I'm English and am surprised you were surprised to discover the American usages - I am very familiar with all of those differences purely through coming into contact with them in popular culture.
Doesn't mean they grate any less though. The whole "I could care less" thing has always bugged me.
Oh - and getting used to the "Different than" thing - I've found it slightly easier when someone pointed out that most other adjectives used as comparitives use 'than' - e.g. bigger than, smaller than, greener than, happier than and so on. So at least I can see maybe where it came from
Yeah, I do watch American tv shows, or I did when I lived in NZ and the UK. Now I watch them dubbed in German, which doesn't help of course. How you could have known how Americans *spell* practice from watching tv shows is beyond me though, and when was the last time the references on a CV were discussed in a popular culture context?
I guess what I'm getting at in this post is that until recently, though I'd noticed these things, I'd always assumed they were wrong (just as the Brits and Kiwis say and write many things which are, strictly speaking, wrong, but quite common anyway), but now I discover that to Americans they're considered right or acceptable. See the difference?
And finally, the different than comparison with comparatives would only help me to get over it if 'different' were a comparative form, which it isn't. All your examples use 'than' not because they're adjectives, but because they're comparative forms, and comparative forms need 'than'. The equivalent in the case of different would be 'more different', in which case 'than' would be fine - but it is a totally different usage.
You're just a purist Mr Bear. I have constant contact with Americans, and the differences both written and spoken are endless. I once tried writing in US English but even with the 'support' of Word I quickly gave up and figured they would just have to accept colour programmes. I do have to say though, the use of the present continuous and the decline of the use of adverbs(?) bothers me:
I love it, not I'm loving it.
It is really big not, it is real big.
And I've met both Kiwis and Americans and I think Brits who make these 'mistakes'.
Get over myself eh 
And I'm supposed to be the purist here? Hahaha!
(That said, couldn't agree more).
Another way of looking at this is that you are also really anal about some things
You can take the boy out of Grammar but you can't take grammar out of the boy!
Commenting by HaloScan
