Q. Hi. I used the following sentence in an email: “Without apologies, I’m sending this Voice article on in case you got depressed (like I did) by the Reading at Risk report or various articles about it.” Someone responded and told me that using “like I did” is grammatically incorrect. Is it really? And if it is NOT incorrect, can you tell me what I can reference to support my wording? (I.e., can I find info on this in The Chicago Manual of Style, and if so, under what topic?) Thanks so much for any help you can offer!
A. I’m afraid your correspondent is right (if not tactful). The correct wording is “as I did.” CMOS, in its “Glossary of Problematic Words and Phrases” (5.254, under “like; as”), has this to say: “The use of like as a conjunction (as in the old jingle ‘tastes good like a cigarette should’) has long been a contentious issue. Traditionally speaking, like is a preposition, not a conjunction equivalent to as {you’re much like me [me is the object of the preposition like]} {do as I say [the conjunction as connects the imperative do with the independent clause I say]}. As a casualism, however, the conjunctive like has become especially common since the mid-twentieth century {nobody cares like I do}. In Standard Written English, a conjunctive like will still provoke frowns among some readers.” For even more on this, see 5.191.