Which versus that:

Deciding how to use 'which' and 'that' is a problem that has no easy solution. I defer to Fowler's English Usage, which says that 'which' should be preceded by a comma and does not, as John points out, identify anything before it; a distinction that is lost on many.
English, which is very old, is a mutable language that has a long history. In the UK, many people tend to use 'which' interchangeably with 'that', with which it is hard to argue on historical grounds.
Trying to be a good American, I use a simple rule: always use 'that' unless there's a specific reason to use 'which', which should be preceded by a comma - a rule that does not always hold, however.

Your tautological friend in Philadelphia, which is not as cold as you'd think.

PC.

Paul Callomon
Collections Manager
Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
Department of Malacology
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
Tel 215-405-5096
Fax 215-299-1170
Secretary, American Malacological Society
On the web at www.malacological.org

>>> [log in to unmask] 02/09/06 07:29AM >>>
My extremely dated, yet still useful "Elements of Style" by Strunk &
White, 1959 indicates "that" to be the defining or restrictive
pronoun. That means it identifies the antecedent noun. "Which" is the
non-defining or non-restrictive pronoun and is thus parenthetic and
should be preceded by a comma.
I believe that those "rules" are widely ignored in current US usage
and the two pronouns are used interchangeably.

John Wolff, Lancaster, PA

At 05:55 AM 2/9/2006, you wrote:

>By the way, a grammatical question:
>Which, That... I read sometimes sentences that use "which" and "that"
>indifferently,as this last one. Is this right ?
>
>I understand that, between these two sentences : "the thing that I hold",
>"the thing which I hold", the first is correct and the second must be thrown
>away, but...
>Between these two : "the thing that is", "the thing which is", which one is
>the better in US in GB etc ?
>
>Any help welcome
>
>regards
>
>Olivier Caro

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