more on "which" and "that"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

I am rather surprised that educated and otherwise apparently respectable
persons who actually hold jobs involving writing are promulgating this
'rule'. I never heard this 'rule' during my school days; I was taught
explicitly that non-restrictive "which" usually has a comma and that
restrictive "which" usually does not (which is natural based on speech
rhythm anyway IMHO); I suppose I'd read enough even by junior high school
to know that any 'rule' against restrictive "which" is bogus, but the issue
never arose. I was mystified for some time in the late 1990's by the
Microsoft grammar-checker flagging my restrictive "which" here and there;
when I figured out what was happening I wrote it off to post-literacy among
the, uh, experts writing the database. But now I suppose enough time has
passed that even the, uh, editors are post-literate in many cases.

I'm with Arnold and the M-W folks, of course.

-- Doug Wilson