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© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
"Different than" is a very popular expression: "My car is different than yours." As far as I can tell, "different from" is relatively rare: "My car is different from yours." The trouble is that "different than" makes little sense; it is sloppy language. We should be saying "different from."
The British seem to consider "different than" an Americanism, just one of the many grating ways that we Americans abuse the language.
One email from England told me that "different than" is British, and "different from" is American. See alt.usage.english, where we see that "different than" is common in American speech, but is rare in writing from either country.