Note: This is my last week of recycling posts from my early days of blogging. Stay tuned for new content next week.
In response to my recent post Who vs. That, a colleague noted that she still struggles a bit with which and that.
Now even ace copywriters like moi are sometimes unsure about when to use which and when to use that. In the end, I bet some of us wing it, hoping that no one will pick up on our flubs.
So here’s the skinny.
Emeritus Professor Paul Brians of Washington State University “confesses” that he does not always observe the distinction between the two and doesn’t believe that many “careful writers of English” do either.
His rule, designed to “pacify” a “small but impassioned group of authorities”—don’t you love how this guy writes?—is this: If you’re calling something out by distinguishing it from a larger group, use “that.” If you’re not, use “which” and precede your clause with a comma. His example? “He made an iceberg Caesar Salad, which didn’t taste quite right.”
I love Professor Brians’ faint tone of scholarly irascibility, and I heartily recommend checking out his web page, “Common Errors in English.”
Now, on to my other all-time favorite grammar authority, Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe is I, The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.
Ms. O’Conner exhorts us not to avoid using “that” out of a misplaced sense of elegance. Use that, she says, when you can’t drop the clause it precedes and still retain the meaning of the sentence. Her example? “The dog that won the best in show was Buster’s bulldog.” Take out “that won the best in show,” and your sentence has no reason to exist.
Everybody clear? Go forth and prosper.
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