I have come across the sentence ": Dad's personal finances were about as healthy as he." and I can't help but feel something is wrong here, shouldn't it be " as healthy as he is" or as healthy as him ", if not, what's the difference between the three and in which cases do we use each one ?
1 Answer
Grammatically it's fine if outdated.
"As" and "than" used to be more readily parsed as conjunctions, and then the ellipsis of all but the subject of the second clause was natural.
He runs faster than I.
She is wealthier than he.
Now, however, the preposition is understood more readily than the conjunction, so expect an object pronoun instead.
He runs faster than me.
She is wealthier than him.
No doubt there are some pedants still who would insist on the former, because the logic of the preposition is quite murky (runs faster than him? how is he a speed?), despite being easy to understand.
Most noun phrases, of course, are ambiguous as to whether they're subject or object:
Mary is funnier than Fatima.
The example you found is fine grammatically, though stylistically it's weak because of the mixed register. Using "as" in this way (a conjunction + only subject pronoun) reads as quite formal, yet it's paired with the more colloquial formula "about + [quantity]".
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@KateBunting From a North American perspective: After asking my mom, it seems that even in my parents' generation the ellipsis when it's cast as a conjunction sounds old-fashioned, at least in speech. It certainly wouldn't come out of the mouth of one of my generation. Maybe my grandma would naturally prefer or accept "as he", "as I", etc. That said, in poetic contexts, one could still use this form, as in Dispatch's "As Old As I" from 2020. Dispatch members are in their forties. Commented Sep 10, 2022 at 16:28
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This is a great answer, although I fundamentally disagree with your last sentence. I don't think using "as" in this context is particularly formal, or that "about" is informal. Since it's irrelevant to the question and up for debate, I'd suggest leaving that bit from an otherwise stellar answer Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 0:38
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@ScottishTapWater "as" is not formal, but the conjunction "as" + subject pronoun alone is formal; and "about" is not informal, but "about" + number is informal. Edited to make this clearer. Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 1:07