Grammar School: That or Which (or Who?)
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You. Yes, you, right there with the thumbs. You, scrolling through your feed. If you’ve ever been confused about whether to use the word ‘that’ or the word ‘which’ in a sentence then read on. I’m talking about relative pronouns … oooOOOOOOoooohhhh
Strap in, it’s time for grammar school.
On family holidays, I was the kind of kid who wanted to stay in the car and read his book. I always had a backpack with at least one current book and one just-in-case book for if I finished the current one (I generally still do, actually). And now I’m a grown-up I’ve found my way into teaching, and as such I have had to make sure my grammar is good. If not impeccable, if not unimpeachable or exemplary, it needs to be at least passable. If I don’t quite have the flourish and artifice of a great writer, I can at least have the stubborn exactitude of the state educator. I have to know what I’m talking about.
On top of that, I am an enormous nerd and actually quite like reading about the rules of grammar in the English language. I enjoy reading the diatribes of irascible grognards who moan and lament their students' lack of grammatical finesse, their ignorance of how to identify a dangling modifier, or what a gerund is. It’s amusing. It’s interesting. It feels important.
Of course, there’s an added bonus. Writing that has solid grammar is clear and easy to read. Writing with poor grammar, which is unfortunately quite common on the internet, is confusing and at times even unpleasant to read.
What Was That Rule You Mentioned In The Title?
I showed you how to use it two or three times just now. I’ll do it again:
The rules of grammar that govern the English language are as easy as breathing to those of us who have grown up with them, which is in fact part of the problem when it comes to learning them more formally. We know them, but we don’t know that we know them. How do you breathe? I don’t know, my brain does it for me. I can’t explain it. This makes it difficult to figure out those rules when we stumble across a situation that we don’t intuitively know the answer to, or if we overthink in response to a confusing problem.
And if you aren’t a native speaker of English, it can be even worse. If you ask a native speaker for help, unless they know what they’re talking about they may respond to questions about grammar and syntax with an answer like ‘it just sounds right,’ which isn’t very helpful. It’s things like this which make me want to look into it. I think “Yeah sure it sounds right, but why?”
So what’s the rule?
The answer lies in the use of relative pronouns and the kind of clauses in a sentence. It’s quite simple. If the ‘that/which’ lies in a restrictive clause, use ‘that’. If it’s in a nonrestrictive clause, use ‘which’. If the clause is about a person, use ‘who’. That’s all there is to it. Simple, right?
A Restrictive Clause? A Nonrestrictive Clause?
Yes.
I Don’t Understand What These Are.
Well I’m glad you asked. You may be familiar with main and subordinate clauses (sometimes called independent and dependent clauses, respectively) … but ignore that because this is nothing to do with subordination. Both restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses are a kind of subordinate clause. We know this because we can remove them from a sentence, but the sentence will still makes some kind of sense. If we remove the restrictive clause we will change the meaning of the sentence, but we will still be able to understand it, grammatically speaking. These clauses work to add more information to a sentence. They both clarify something about a subject or object, but they do it in different ways.
For example, take this very boring sentence - ‘The car needs a new paint job.’
But which car? Where is it? How do I know which car to paint? I might just end up painting the wrong one.
We can add a restrictive clause to it and we get:
1- The car that is in the garage needs a new paint job.
Ah, that’s better. The use of the restrictive clause in this sentence changes its meaning. It makes the sentence more specific. It implies that there may be more cars elsewhere, but we’re talking about the particular one in the garage. Without the restrictive clause, we won’t know which car needs a new paint job. We might be able to guess, but the clause restricts our sentence to mean the particular car in the garage.
Instead, we can add a nonrestrictive clause:
2- The car, which is in the garage, needs a new paint job.
Do you see the difference? Do you hear the difference? We’re talking about a car, and it happens to be in the garage. The sentence feels less imperative, less urgent somehow. This is because the nonrestrictive clause just adds a bit of bonus information which isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence. We also get the impression that there is more context here which we aren’t aware of. A previous conversation about a newly purchased second-hand car, perhaps. Incidentally, restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses are also called essential and nonessential clauses.
Notice I have done the thing with ‘that’ and ‘which.’ In the first sentence, the restrictive clause is introduced with the relative pronoun ‘that’, whereas the nonrestrictive clause is bounded by commas and contains the relative pronoun ‘which’. That’s basically all you need to know.
The reasoning behind restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses becomes a bit clearer when we substitute in a nice little ‘who’ instead:
1- Tim Smith who is my flatmate ate all the leftovers.
How many other people called Tim Smith are there in this weird reality? If we didn’t have our restrictive clause to let us know which exact Tim Smith we’re talking about, how many other Tim Smiths could this sentence otherwise be referring to? This is not a world I want to live in, where there are so many Tim Smiths that we can’t just call people by their name. Silly.
2- Tim Smith, who is my flatmate, ate all the leftovers.
This sentence is more friendly, isn’t it? We know there’s a guy called Tim Smith and he ate all the leftovers. He also happens to be my flatmate.
To Recap…
Use the word ‘that’ as a relative pronoun in a restrictive clause. That is to say, when the meaning you need to convey is only made clear with some essential information. Use the word ‘which’ and some commas when you have some information that adds to a sentence, but which wouldn’t impede meaning if you took it away (remember with commas that they bound a nonrestrictive clause only).
You may be talking about cats, wanting to clarify “Cats that are of the subfamily Felinae have a bony hyoid above their larynx, meaning they are able to purr but not to roar.”
Not all cats have this trait, only the ones in the family of small cats Felinae. That’s how the restrictive clause helps us here.
You may want to go further and say something like “Other cats have a vocal structure primarily comprised of ligaments and devoid of bony tissue, which means they can roar, but they cannot purr.” Bonus information! You learn something new every day.
Hold On, Can I just Get Away Without Using The Word?
Yes, you can. You don’t always need to shoehorn a ‘that’ into a sentence. The rules are there for clarity, but language is about communication. If your meaning is clear without extra words then don’t sweat it.
For example, you might say:
1- The players that are wearing blue are winning.
But you could just as easily say:
2- The players wearing blue are winning.
Or you could even say:
3- The blues are winning.
You understand what I mean, so don’t sweat it.
But What About Possessive Relative Pronouns?
Oh gosh, oh Jeez, the what now? No, it’s easy. Just use ‘whose’. If you’re talking about a person, a place, even if you’re talking about an object. It works for restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. Such as:
1- The man whose sandwich I ate wasn’t happy with me for the rest of the afternoon.
2- The chair, whose legs were crooked and uneven, rocked ominously when I sat on it.
Or you could be old school and write something like:
3- The house, the garden of which was a florid mess of overflowing ivy and rose bushes, stood forlorn and empty at the end of the road.
4- The Duchess, the house of whom I had robbed the very previous evening, invited me for tea and biscuits.
But if you write like that then people will think you’re a time traveler from the 19th century.
British Vs. American English.
I should mention that during my research and learning, I uncovered that in British English, ‘that’ and ‘which’ are essentially interchangeable as relative pronouns and it doesn’t matter which one you use. But in American English, the rule is more prevalent. I don’t think it’s important to differentiate between the two these days, except when you’re spelling words like colour or honour or aluminium. Those are hills I will die on.
Essentially it is a matter of style, but I would tend to err on the side of caution and follow this rule unless I really felt like it wasn’t helping me out.
That’s it, that’s the whole thing. I hope what began as an article about a trivial topic actually turned into a somewhat useful lesson about clauses and how sentence structure helps convey meaning. I’ve enjoyed writing this article so I think I’ll make a few more on obscure points of grammar. Fronted adverbials, gerunds, subordination, sentence types, and whatnot.
