That is exactly how we learned it too and I can't figure out why people don't use these correctly. Another one for "than" is also if you can replace it with "i

That is exactly how we learned it too and I can't figure out why people don't use these correctly. Another one for "than" is also if you can replace it with "instead of". "Rather than learning the language, he went to a football game". Not "Rather - then learning the language later - he went to a football game first". Well actually there 'then' is correct but I had to make a broken up sentence that you would never write but you might say it. If you want to tell someone about this, you start with 'rather' then think of explaining first that he did go learn afterwards so you interject your own sentence and then go on. But when writing you have enough time to form a proper sentence. Of course auto correction can play a role nowadays. I wrote "of" more often recently and a typoed "ofg" might be corrected to "of" and not "off". Sure. Now what I do understand is that native speakers actually forget the rules meaning the "why" something is correct. After a while you can usually just tell what's correct. It just "sounds right" and you can't explain it to someone else.