The "sliding phrase" issue is helpful.

But as I reached the end of the explanation at the KISS site, I was a bit surprised by this:

"A cute young woman once wrote: 

Anyone can train a horse better than me.

This causes a problem because the ellipsis doesn't work right. Since "me" is in the objective case, the sentence means 

Anyone can train a horse better than *anyone can train* me.

I could picture the young men in the course imagining how they would try to train her. But since we are now working with clauses, students are able to see the ellipsed clause structure. And, since our analysis ALWAYS depends on meaning, students can decide for themselves whether they are dealing with a prepositional "than" or an ellipsed subordinate clause."

Now, I'm not a proponent of language-policing in the academy, but I'd suggest that the example used to describe the grammatical problem might be more "reader-friendly" to certain people (inebriated members of an Animal House-like fraternity, for example) than to others (most men and women, for example, who --if they have them-- keep allusions to their domination fantasies out of the "classroom").

Of am I too old-fashioned and uptight?

Kent

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