SC: you are more interesting than he

[avishal]

Hi,

This is a repost. I had earlier incorrectly posted this in the Manhattan GMAT CAT Verbal category.

In the 3rd edition SC book, under the comparisons strategy chapter, the following example appears as a regular comparative form:

"You are MORE INTERESTING than he."

Shouldn't this be "you are more interesting than he is/was."? Is "is/was" assumed on GMAT?
Why is "you are more interesting than him." wrong (if so)?

On the same topic, what is correct on the GMAT [my own imagined sentence]:

a) "George dances better than me."
b) "George dances better than I."
c) "George dances better than I do."

Between (b) and (c), (c) certainly seems better. However, could it be that "do" is assumed in (b)?
Between (a) and (c), I'm not so sure :)

Regards,
Vishal

[JonathanSchneider]

The "is" is in fact assumed. This is allowed whenever the first part of the comparison (in this case "you are") is nearby. If we had a long interupting modifier in between, we would probably say "than he is" for clarity. In general, though, for shorter comparisons the verb can be assumed (or shortened, in cases like: "I walked further than he did.")

You cannot compare "you" to "him" when you have used "you" as the subject. "Him" is an object pronoun; this difference violates parallelism. Think about it: you wouldn't say: "than him is."

(c) is correct. You are comparing actions (not just people, as before), and so you need to have the comparison reflect that. Oftentimes we use these helper verbs for comparisons (do/does, did, have, had, etc.) when repeating the original verb would be awkward.