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For example,

Peter's movements are completely different than John's movements.

What can I replace John's movements with?

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What are you trying to say? Are you asking if you can replace John's movements with just John's? – Sam Apr 6 '11 at 21:50
@Sam: I don't what can I replace. – Chan Apr 6 '11 at 22:03
2  
I know this isn't on topic, but I would change "different than" to "different from" – Kevin Apr 7 '11 at 14:14
@Kevin: there's a question for that. – RegDwighт♦ Sep 23 '11 at 14:09

closed as not a real question by RegDwighт♦ Sep 23 '11 at 14:10

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Peeled bananas would be a grammatically correct choice, but probably wouldn't make sense.

I imagine you're asking if

Peter's movements are complete different than John's.

is an acceptable version and the answer is: yes.

See also a related question about different than as opposed to different to.

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Thank you. I got it ;) – Chan Apr 6 '11 at 22:03
up vote 0 down vote

Instead of John's movements you can say the movements of John, but the first is correct, and I don't see any reason to replace it.

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I don't particularly like "Peter's movements are different than the movements of John" because you've broken the parallelism for no good reason (although it's still grammatical). You could say "The movements of Peter are different from those of John." But as everybody says, there's nothing wrong with the original. – Peter Shor Sep 23 '11 at 13:33

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