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Course: Grammar > Unit 3
Lesson 3: Relative pronouns"That" versus "which"
Wondering when to use "that" and "which"? Remember two things: "that" doesn't like commas, and "which" isn't used for people.
Want to join the conversation?
- Ok, I'm going to put this as simple as possible... Does this sentence make sense? "That dinosaur has a purple tail, which makes it a rare find!"(75 votes)
- Yea it does why are you asking? not trying to be mean though.(4 votes)
- what about the phrase "which one of you did this" where which is referring to two people(18 votes)
- So, does that mean that "Which" is good with commas, and "That" is good with people?(17 votes)
- yes, but I would rather say rare to find(0 votes)
- At5:11when talking about the woman boarding the plane, David says that which is inappropriate and that it sounds better to use that or who instead. I wholeheartedly agree, but how does one decide whether to use that or who in an instance like this?(12 votes)
- You don't have to choose, you can use any of those.(3 votes)
- At2:45, David begins discussing the "that" versus "which" drama. Why not simply avoid this almost fruitless, nearly theological, debate by writing "The orange carrot was tasty."?(8 votes)
- Sometimes you can skate around the need for
that
orwhich
but other times you cannot because you end up with a sentence that is convoluted and difficult to understand.(9 votes)
- Does it work in questions too? So, for example I shouldn't say
"Which of these two applicants do you prefer?"
but better say
"Who of these two applicants do you prefer?"(5 votes)- Since there is a choice involved, I'd opt for "which" in this sentence, because by referring to the options as "applicants" you've basically taken away their personhood. If you rephrased it to read, "Of these two people, whom do you prefer?" , that might also work well.(5 votes)
- Hello everybody, i am very grateful for search this page, the content is very usefull,
i have a question, in the minute4:00David named the sentences NR- non-restrictive- and R-restrictive- what do you want to say with this? (i never had hearded them)
what is the meaning of those names.?
thank you by your effort.(7 votes) - I really like how David thoroughly explained the concept and usage of how that and which are used. The only question I have is this. Which group is right, the prescriptivists, or the descriptivists?(4 votes)
- I, for one, am a descriptivist.(6 votes)
- Which type of pronoun is used in the following sentence?
I think I will buy this sweater.(5 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello
grammarians, we're gonna talk about that versus which but I would like to start off by saying that
in the study of grammar there's basically this
long, on-going fight between two camps and it's
between the prescriptivists, who believe that language
has concrete rules that need to be abided by, and the descriptivists, who also believe that language has rules, but see language as more subject to change than the prescriptivists would like. Now I find myself to be right
in-between these two camps which frequently makes me
feel like I want to stick out my hands and say, "You guys stop fighting. "You're both right." All of this is to say that Bryan Garner, the prescriptive author
of my main usage manual, Garner's Modern American Usage, is not a fan of the word which. He thinks it's ruined more sentences than any other word in
English through its overuse. On the other hand Geoffrey
Pullum, one of the editors of my descriptive Cambridge
Grammar of English says that this position of
Garner's is utter bunkum and nonsense and that upon
review of the entire body of English literature, the
rules about which and that are largely made up. This is why it's so hard to
get a good straight answer to that versus which on the Internet because everyone is arguing at once. Because half the people say
that there are definite rules and then half the other people say, "The rules don't matter dude." But a prolonged study
of both camps has led me to determine that there
are distinctions in usage. There is a time to use that
and a time to use which. From this entire argument, from these generations of just bickering, I have sussed out two distinctions. Distinction one, that is bad with commas. Distinction two, which is bad with people. So, let's start with
distinction number one that that is bad with commas. Now Bryan Garner says
that most of the time, nine times out of ten in fact, he says if you want to use a relative pronoun and you're trying to choose
between that and which you should probably use
that and the one time out of ten that you do want to use which, you're supposed to use a comma first. So, a comma, which, as in, "The carrot, which was orange, was tasty." So you can write it that way
with this little comma-net, but you can also write it without, as in "The carrot which was orange was tasty." Now the distinction
between these two sentences is the distinction between non-restrictive and restrictive relative clauses. Because the carrot, comma,
which was orange, comma, was tasty means that you could take out the comma-bracketed clause without changing the
meaning of the sentence. "The carrot was tasty." But, the carrot, no
comma, which was orange, no comma, was tasty that which part is a restrictive clause. The fact that the carrot
is orange is essential to the sentence. "The carrot which was orange was tasty," doesn't preclude the idea
that there might have been a non-orange, non-tasty carrot
involved somewhere else. However, if we try to use
that in a non-restrictive way, to say, "The carrot, that
was orange, was tasty," it, to me, and to other
native English speakers, that just sounds a little weird. It's not ungrammatical, per se. There's nothing about the
word that or which that says, "This is what it must be used for." But, of all the combinations
that could be made using either which or that or commas or not commas, that, with commas, is the least common,
and that is why to me, as a speaker and writer of
standard-American English, it doesn't look regular. And to try that once more, without commas, now we have, "The carrot
that was orange was tasty." This is restrictive usage again. And this one works. So, number one works. Number two works. Number three is weird,
and number four is fine. So, the distinction here is that that just doesn't play well with commas. That's distinction number one. Okay, so distinction number two, which is bad with people. So the way I like to remember this is that I imagine a witch who
does not like other people. So I just imagine a kind of a cranky witch who lives all alone in
a house in the woods, and anytime someone comes up to her house and asks her if she wants a
subscription to a magazine, or does she want to come over for dinner, she says, "Blah!", and she slams the door. The which witch doesn't like people. So the way this shakes out is that which doesn't refer to people, and that can refer to anything. This is also really strange
and it portrays a prejudice, in English, toward human beings. Check this out. To prove this, let me throw
some sentence fragments at you. "The dog that I saw, the snow that fell, "the woman that boarded the plane," all of these are fine. Let's try them again with which. "The dog which I saw, the snow which fell, "the woman which boarded the plane," now, this to me, as a
native speaker of English, doesn't sound right. It should either be who or that. And again, this isn't
because of some kind of rule of official grammar. This is just the way that
the language has shaken out. Which just doesn't have a
connotation of human beings. So that's the essential distinction. That doesn't like commas. Which is bad with people. You can learn anything. David out.