Case again

I know I mention case a lot, but I like to post comics about grammar, and I happened to run into one that uses case both correctly and incorrectly in a construction that can be tricky to get right—comparison. First the comic.

I like Scott Meyer’s work because of his clever humor. Apparently that’s Scott on the right. I don’t know if the fellow on the left represents an actual person, but usually he’s the one who makes the mistakes. This time he gets it right and Scott makes the mistake. Look at the first speech.

I heard the boss yelling. Did you tell him that you’re smarter than him again?

Remember the last post, about copulatives and predicate nominatives? Yup, he should have said “…you’re smarter than he.” The uncompressed sentence is “…that you are smarter than he is.” “He” sounds correct now, doesn’t it?

Go to the last cell, first speech.

Why shouldn’t I be able to tell people that I’m smarter than they?

“They” is correct! The expanded sentence is “…I am smarter than they are.” Sounds right, doesn’t it?

As a footnote, I should point out that the captions on to two last cells use “its” and “it’s” correctly. But you noticed that, didn’t you?