In comparison to or in comparison with
A mother spends much time with her children in comparison to the father.
A mother spends much time with her children in comparison with the father.
I don't have an idea which preposition to chose. I thought that I would get help online, but could not get what I wanted.
However there is one blog post of Oxford English Living Dictionaries site under the title of compare to or compare with; the title contains the words "compare to" rather than comparison, thus is not akin to what I am asking here.
Google Books shows an interesting trend in both usages, which appear to be equally common in recent years.
though the more common suggested usage by the OLD is the preposition with (but note that also the preposition “to” is present)
by/in comparison (with somebody/something):
when compared with somebody/something.
The second half of the game was dull by comparison with the first.
The tallest buildings in London are small in comparison with New York's skyscrapers.
And:
[uncountable] comparison (with somebody/something) the process of comparing two or more people or things:
- Comparison with other oil-producing countries is extremely interesting.
- I enclose the two plans for comparison.
- The education system bears/stands no comparison with(= is not as good as) that in many Asian countries.
- For Durkheim, comparison was the most important method of analysis in sociology.
The following piece from jakubmarian.com illustrates the usage of “in comparison” and suggests that both preposition are commonly used now:
Although “compare something to something” and “compare something with something” do not mean the same (you can read more about the differences in my previous article), “in comparison to” and “in comparison with” do mean the same. You can say, for example,
- In comparison to other candidates, she was very good.
as well as
- In comparison with other candidates, she was very good.
and the meaning is essentially the same as that of “compared with” and “compared to”. Other examples:
- France is relatively rich, in comparison to/with other European countries.
- The American branch of the company makes very little profit, in comparison to/with their Asian division.
It is worth noting that “in comparison with” used to be much more common in the past than “in comparison to”, but there is no difference in their relative frequencies in modern English literature.