more on "which" and "that"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I was told the "rule" about "which" and "that" by a journalism major at NYU around 1972.

I had never encountered it in an English class. In fact, I still haven't.

JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: more on "which" and "that"
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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


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