That word "neen" / restrictive "that"

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

Larry wrote:

<< I suspect that the imposition itself follows from the "logic" that if
you can't use "that" with non-restrictives (as in the final two
examples in the right column), you "shouldn't" be allowed to use to
use "who"/"which" with restrictives (as in the last two examples in
the left column).  The fact that no actual speakers or writers would
obey this constraint if they weren't forced to at penpoint doesn't
stop the editors or mavens. >>

I'm not the first to call this practice by copy editors a "which hunt." I
found it especially excruciating when I published a textbook years ago with a
certain publisher (not my nice current one, Houghton Mifflin), and they
assigned my book to a copy editor fresh with a B.A. in English. Now this was
a book I had written and rewritten so that all the kinks were out, so the
editor didn't have much to do. But for a copy editor to read through a whole
book and do nothing is like a state police trooper issuing no traffic
tickets, so maybe for that reason this editor made a point of changing
restrictive "which"es to "that"s. I changed some of them back, bolstering my
argument by pointing out numerous places where even this "which hunter" had
not noticed restrictive "which"es, because they were so natural.
- Allan Metcalf