As a child, I enjoyed having pen pals and writing letters (on actual stationery with turquoise ink in an Easterbrook fountain pen). Maybe that is why today I enjoy corresponding with our readers when they have questions about grammar and word usage in the pages of  National Geographic. Of course, I'm happiest when I don't have to admit an oversight on our part or the publication of an error.

Recently a reader challenged the use of us in this statement from the Stonehenge article in June: "Skeletal remains indicate that despite physically demanding lives, the people of Neolithic Britain were more light built than us."

The reader went on to say, "I was taught that it is understood that you are actually saying, 'more lightly built than we are built.' I know NG is not a grammar magazine, but I have a hard time believing that NG is wrong; on the other hand, my grammar ego is going to take it hard if I'm wrong!"

Fortunately, I was able to wiggle (or is it wriggle?) out of this one by responding:

"In this case both your grammar ego and ours can remain intact, although I believe you have a slight edge over us.

"The question with this particular construction is whether than
is a conjunction or a preposition. If it's considered a conjunction and
the sentence is shorthand for 'more lightly built than we are,' then
you're right, we should have said we. If than is considered a
preposition, which some grammarians argue, then us is correct. Since
the first version sounds rather stuffy and pedantic and the second one
incorrect to finely tuned ears, we should probably have recast the
sentence.

"There are times when the pronoun used can change the meaning of the sentence. For instance:

He likes John more than she. [more than she likes John.]
He likes John more than her. [more than he likes her.]"

For a usage discussion of than as a preposition, here's what Merriam-Webster's unabridged online dictionary says:

Jack’s question after my last column—is it correct to say “Where is it at?”—takes me back to my childhood visits with my grandparents, who lived in a small town on the edge of the coal mines in eastern Pennsylvania. I can still clearly hear their next-door neighbor screaming to someone else in her house, “Where are you at?” At the time, I lived in a suburb of New York City, where this particular construction was unknown. So also was “Hi, ya,” a typical greeting in my grandparents’ town and one that I'm told was among the first words I spoke. When I returned home from summers spent in Pennsylvania, it would take several weeks for the regional dialect to fade from my speech.

The marvelous multivolume Dictionary of American Regional English, edited by Frederic Cassidy, says, in the entry for at, that it is used redundantly, usually at the end of a where clause, in the South and Midland part of the U.S. and labels it informal, occasionally jocular or for emphasis. So the construction is certainly found in informal speech in some parts of the country. The dictionary, known to wordsmiths as DARE, is an amazing compendium of regional word usage that has taken decades to produce and will not be complete until the final volume, Sl-Z, comes out next year.

Another similar phrase, perhaps more widely heard, is the idiomatic “where it’s at,” a slang expression that gained popularity in the hippie era and in the 1990s became the title of a Beck single as well as the title for a Michael Quinion "World Wide Words" column on the use of the “at” symbol. According to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary the expression means

Thanks for asking the question, Jack. It’s been interesting to answer. My advice would be to refrain from tacking an unnecessary at on to the end of questions starting with where, but to feel free to be hip and use “where it’s at”—in moderation, of course.