{"id":1637,"date":"2014-09-09T16:15:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T22:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2020-11-25T10:54:03","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:54:03","slug":"old-superstions-die-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/pronouns\/old-superstions-die-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Superstitions Die Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

People that try hard usually succeed<\/em>. Is that sentence grammatical? Some nitpickers say the relative pronoun that<\/em> should never refer to humans. Here is an interesting piece of mail that arrived recently:<\/p>\n

Please review your \u201crule\u201d about the use of \u201cwho\u201d and \u201cthat\u201d when referring to persons. The use of \u201cthat\u201d when referring to people is very poor English and, unfortunately, has become today\u2019s vernacular. I wonder if you could review your work here, so that students are not confused. I teach graduate students and I do not permit the distinctions you are making re this particular word usage. I cannot refer my students to your site for that reason. <\/em><\/p>\n

The writer went on to say that using that<\/em> instead of who,<\/em> while \u201ccommon today in vernacular English,\u201d is \u201cstill eschewed in academic writing.\u201d If we doubted this, we were advised to consult an online site called The Purdue Owl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is what we did.<\/p>\n

According to the Owl<\/em>, one may substitute that<\/em> for who<\/em> in informal English, but who <\/em>is \u201cmore common in formal written English\u201d and is \u201cpreferred\u201d\u2014although the Owl<\/em> does not say who prefers it. Look at the wording: \u201cmore common\u201d and \u201cpreferred.\u201d The Owl<\/em> is conceding that even in formal usage, that<\/em> sometimes replaces who<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We language fussbudgets like to demonize \u201ctoday\u2019s vernacular,\u201d but it won\u2019t work in this case. Many authorities past and present would beg to differ with the Owl<\/em>, and with our correspondent\u2019s assertion that that<\/em> for who <\/em>is \u201cvery poor English.\u201d The<\/em> Chicago Manual of Style<\/em>\u2014the publishing industry\u2019s bible\u2014says, \u201cThat<\/em> refers to a person, animal, or thing.\u201d In the 1990s, author and literary critic Kingsley Amis wrote that he found the man that I spoke to<\/em> preferable to the man whom I spoke to<\/em>. In the eighties, English scholar John B. Bremner wrote \u201cthat<\/em> may refer to persons,\u201d with no mention of formal or informal. In the seventies, the renowned editor Theodore M. Bernstein wrote, \u201cYou may say either \u2018the boy that<\/em> lives next door\u2019 or \u2018the boy who<\/em> lives next door.\u2019 \u201d In the mid-sixties\u2014half a century ago\u2014an eleventh-grade textbook called Warriner\u2019s English Grammar and Composition<\/em> said, \u201cThat<\/em> may be used to refer to either persons or things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Great essayists, novelists, and poets have been substituting that<\/em> for who <\/em>for centuries. A famous quotation from the Gospel of John begins: \u201cHe that is without sin among you \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Many words have been used to describe the Bible, but it\u2019s a safe bet that \u201cinformal\u201d is not one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People that try hard usually succeed. Is that sentence grammatical? Some nitpickers say the relative pronoun that should never refer to humans. Here is an interesting piece of mail that arrived recently: Please review your \u201crule\u201d about the use of \u201cwho\u201d and \u201cthat\u201d when referring to persons. The use of \u201cthat\u201d when referring to people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pronouns","category-whowhomwhoeverwhomever","category-who-vs-which-vs-that"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}