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Which versus That

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Just ran across a nice summary of when to use which and when to use that … which I always find hard to explain. From the Dayton PRSA website:

The difference between “that” and “which” can be vague until you get the hang of it. “Which” sets off parenthetical information — stuff that can be lifted right out of the sentence without changing the sentence’s main point. “That” introduces information essential to the main point of the sentence. “The press conference, which will be held at 2 p.m., will include a question-and-answer session.” “A company that listens to its customers will succeed.”

Thinking of which clauses as parenthetical information — bracketed by commas, rather than parentheses — is a nice way of explaining this distinction. And we didn’t even have to use the words restrictive and nonrestrictive, which tend to make non-editors’ eyes glaze over …

Posted in Grammar, Punctuation nightmares | no comments »

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