Comments on: “That” and “Which”

By: Kurt Olsen

Kurt Olsen — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:53:55 +0000

An old boss taught me to “Go ‘which’ hunting.” I never forgot the rule after that.

By: Mister Thorne

Mister Thorne — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 21:48:18 +0000

It’s a curious thing. High school English teachers impress their students with the distinction between ‘which’ and ‘that.’ But then some of those students go on to study legal writing, and then they’re taught to use ‘which’ instead of ‘that’ because it sounds a tad more hifalutin, and the more hifalutin you sound, the more you sound like a lawyer.

And since courts are more tolerant of such errors than high school English teachers . . . .

By: Josh Ard

Josh Ard — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:42:06 +0000

An obvious piece of advice is not to write sentences so convoluted with so many commas. It’s easy to lose the structure. One thing that may have been important in the creative process is that a comma is required after the word agent, to close the parenthetical expression beginning except that. The orginal writer (or some editor) may have seen that comma and thought that another one was needed after business. Once you make that mistake, then it’s logical to use which. It has to be unusual to have a that-relative clause surrounded by commas. Commas are often there to reflect intonation contours and not just grammar. In speaking we might pause around a relative clause when we’re thinking but we would probably produce something that would look ungrammatical in writing. Example:
The movie–you know the one we saw at the mall last week–was just reviewed in today’s paper. If that were cleaned up for writing, we might write:
The movie that we saw at the mall last week was just reviewed in today’s paper.
By the way, something like this got Sen. Biden into trouble. The interviewer said something after Biden made the initial comment about Obama. Then Biden starting saying “Who is the first . . .” The news stories wrote it up as a single comment, with no indication of the pause.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:03:38 +0000

I have often written technical articles for publication in engineering and trade publications. It took years for copy editors to break me of the habit of using “which” when I should use “that”.

In my work now I often review and sign professional service and other contracts, and other legal and technical documents. I frequently change “which” to “that”. If “which” is used to introduce non-restrictive clauses I strike the clause. I agree with you that non-restrictive clauses have no place in contracts.

Sometimes non-restrictive clauses are used to make statements that, although not essential to the sentence, should belong in the document. In that case the statement belongs in a separate sentence.

For example “…protocols, which are the property of xxx, …” should be written with a separate sentence that states that “protocols are the property of xxx.”

I have never had anyone object to these changes.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:05:40 +0000

Here are the links to the relevant cases for anyone that's interested: December opinion and the original August order.