Grammar Wednesday and Deana Barnhart's News

That vs Which

I've always been a fan of the word that. Some of it comes from doing city council minutes for years where we don't do dialogue even though that's really what we're taking down. Using that in this case takes the place of your quotation marks.

However, it's easy to go a little crazy with it when you're a writer. You can check out my findings in this post from last year here--and how many times I deleted that.

An option might be using which instead.

Believe it or not, there's a difference.

From the Gregg Reference Manual (aka Grammar Bible), p. 336, item 1062b [I added the pink and blue for effect]:

Which and that are used when referring to places, objects, and animals. Which is always used to introduce nonessential clauses, and that is ordinarily used to introduce essential clauses.

So what does that mean?

If the clause (something I would call an aside comment--kinda like this one) can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence, it's nonessential. So use which.

The building that is painted brown is for sale.

The building, which is painted brown, is for sale.

In the first case, you're restricting it to only that brown building. In the second case, the 'which is painted brown' is merely additional information about the building.

Since that is (usually) essential, you don't use a comma.

Happy News!

If you haven't heard yet, the awesome Deana Barnhart has an agent! And wait until you find out the process that led to this great event. You can check it out at Deana's blog here.



This Saturday I'm going to the Got Stories conference put on by Rhemalda Publishing. I know a couple of authors who will be presenting there. Should be fun.

What are you up to?