How to express difference from to

Question

How do you express the difference between two value correctly?
Let's say I have several houses. For example house A has a larger height than house B. Now I have several cases where I just want to compare the difference from A to B, coming from the height of A. For example:

The difference to B is 50 feet. (from the context it should be clear that the starting point is the height of A)

The difference from B is 50 feet.

Which is better/correct? Note that if possible I do not want to say "the difference between A and B is...". I know this is correct, but I have many houses to compare, and it is tedious to mention the pairs exactly each time. I prefer to define a starting point, for example the height of house A, and then compare it with other heights by stating just the "difference to ...". But I am not sure if you can do this in English.
Another example to show what I mean:

The height of house A is 100 feet. The difference in height to house B is 50 feet.

Thanks for any guidance.

Chronocidal · Accepted Answer

Any of the following:

This is 50 feet taller than house B
This is 50 feet more than house B
House B is 50 feet shorter

Here, we use an a pronoun ("This" for the first 2 examples, implicit in the third) in place of "the height of house A", and write our sentence to compare House B against it - specifically, comparing the quantity of their heights
This not only indicates the difference in height (absolute magnitude), it has also specified which is greater (direction), giving you a vector quantity - something that your examples lacked.
In addition, you can easily chain additional houses into the text:

The height of house A is 100 feet. This is 50 feet taller than house B, but only 30 feet taller than house C, and 5 feet shorter than house D.
or
The height of house A is 100 feet.  Houses B and C are 50 and 30 feet shorter, respectively, while house D is 5 feet taller

If you are trying to make the sentence even more elliptical, direct references to "height" or "feet" can be also omitted:

The height of house A is 100 feet.  This is 50 feet more than house B, but only 30 more than house C, and 5 less than house D

However, I feel that this leaves out too much information, and is harder to read.

How to express difference from to

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