{"id":1833,"date":"2015-03-17T14:36:34","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T20:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2020-11-25T10:55:34","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:55:34","slug":"that-and-which-rule-or-guideline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/effective-writing\/that-and-which-rule-or-guideline\/","title":{"rendered":"That<\/em> and Which<\/em>: Rule or Guideline?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sentence in our recent article on spelling ruffled a few readers. See if you can spot what caused the commotion: \u201cThe other errant site offered a quiz which claimed that \u2018inflammation of the membrane of the brain\u2019 is spelled \u2018meningitas.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Did you catch it? Our correspondents insisted \u201cwhich\u201d was wrong and should be replaced by \u201cthat.\u201d For those unfamiliar with the prevailing assumptions about\u00a0that<\/em> and\u00a0which<\/em>, here is an overview:<\/p>\n

Consider the sentence\u00a0It was just something\u00a0that<\/strong>\u00a0came over me<\/em>. According to most sticklers, when a dependent clause (that came over me<\/em>) does not require a comma to introduce it, the relative pronoun that<\/em>\u00a0is indicated, and\u00a0which<\/em> would be wrong. Such a clause is called\u00a0restrictive<\/em> (or\u00a0essential<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0defining<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Now consider the sentence\u00a0Joe ordered eggs and toast, which<\/strong> he always enjoyed<\/em>. When a dependent clause (which he always enjoyed<\/em>) requires a comma to introduce it, the relative pronoun\u00a0which<\/em> is necessary, and\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0would be wrong. Such a clause is called nonrestrictive<\/em> (or\u00a0nonessential<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0nondefining<\/em>).<\/p>\n

These guidelines caught the public\u2019s attention back in 1926, when H.W. Fowler\u2019s Dictionary of\u00a0Modern English Usage<\/em>, the bible of modern grammar, endorsed\u00a0that<\/em> for restrictive clauses and\u00a0which<\/em>\u00a0for nonrestrictive clauses. Fowler\u2019s suggestion has become law, even though Fowler himself was never strident about his theory, writing \u201cit would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the background behind the scolding we received for using a restrictive\u00a0which<\/em>. Nonetheless, we stand behind our sentence and would not change it.<\/p>\n

The language scholar Geoffrey Pullum has written, \u201cWhat is actually true about expert users of English \u2026 is that they use both\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0which<\/em>\u00a0in integrated relative clauses, in proportions that aren\u2019t very far away from being 50\/50.\u201d We could start with the King James Bible: \u201cRender therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar\u2019s; and unto God the things that are God\u2019s.\u201d Jane Austen used the restrictive\u00a0which<\/em>, as did Macaulay, Dickens, Melville, Conrad, Lewis Carroll, and other literary luminaries right up to the present.<\/p>\n

William Faulkner, awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, was a champion of the restrictive\u00a0which<\/em>. As an experiment we opened Faulkner\u2019s 1932 novel\u00a0Light in August<\/em>\u00a0to a random page and immediately found \u201cHe just stared at her, at the face which he had never seen before.\u201d President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s stirring Pearl Harbor speech before Congress began \u201cYesterday, December 7, 1941\u2014a date which will live in infamy \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting back to the offending sentence that started this flap, we\u2019ll let this passage from Wilson Follett\u2019s\u00a0Modern American Usage<\/em>\u00a0explain our word choice: \u201c[There are] many instances where being forced to use that<\/em>\u00a0leads to an intolerable repetition of sounds.\u201d We wrote \u201ca quiz which claimed that\u201d simply because we cringed at the look and sound of \u201ca quiz that claimed that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who swear by Fowler\u2019s rule have a formidable array of language scholars aligned against them. Here is a small sample \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can use\u00a0which<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0to introduce a restrictive clause\u2014the grounds for your choice should be stylistic.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Merriam-Webster\u2019s Dictionary of English Usage<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis use of\u00a0which<\/em>\u00a0with restrictive clauses is very common, even in edited prose. Moreover, in some situations\u00a0which<\/em>\u00a0is preferable to\u00a0that<\/em>.\u201d \u2014American Heritage Usage Panel<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one could plausibly insist that\u00a0which<\/em>\u00a0as a restrictive relative pronoun is indefensible or incorrect.\u201d \u2014Wilson Follett,\u00a0Modern American Usage<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a canonical case of a self-appointed authority inventing a grammatical theory, observing that elite writers routinely violate the theory, and concluding not that the theory is wrong or incomplete, but that the writers are in error.\u201d \u2014Mark Liberman, American linguist<\/p>\n

\u201cFollow the Fowler rule if you want to; it\u2019s up to you. But don\u2019t tell me that it\u2019s crucial or that the best writers respect it. It\u2019s a time-wasting early-20th-century fetish, a bogeyman rule undeserving of the attention of intelligent grownups.\u201d \u2014Geoffrey K. Pullum, linguistics professor, University of Edinburgh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sentence in our recent article on spelling ruffled a few readers. See if you can spot what caused the commotion: \u201cThe other errant site offered a quiz which claimed that \u2018inflammation of the membrane of the brain\u2019 is spelled \u2018meningitas.\u2019 \u201d Did you catch it? Our correspondents insisted \u201cwhich\u201d was wrong and should be […]<\/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":[12,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-who-vs-which-vs-that"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833"}],"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=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}