Hi there. Let me jump right in here. If you are one of those people who correct people’s grammar in casual conversation, I probably don’t like you. I’m sure you’re a fine person and all. I’ll bet you give more to charity than I do (not hard), and were a small child to fall down a well, you’d probably be much more willing than me to dive right in after them (also not hard – I don’t particularly care for small children). But at the same time, whereas I had no problem with the previous sentence, you had at least one, if not two problems with it:

1. “more willing than me” – some (e.g., Cecil Adams) would claim that “than” is not a preposition but rather a conjunction, and as such this is intended to be the elliptical construction more willing than I [would be]. Admittedly *more willing than me [would be] is atrocious. But “than” does function as a preposition quite often, as in the sentence Quentin likes his friends more than me. More compelling is the fact that Lord Byron wrote in a letter Lord Delawarr is considerably younger than me. (cited in the “than me” entry) If it’s good enough for Lord Byron, it’s good enough for a schmo like me.

2. “them” to refer to a single person of indeterminate gender. This has been discussed at length by people smarter than me over at Language Log. So go fight them.

Anyway. This is just filler to start the blog. Real stuff is forthcoming.