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Wednesday 21 September 2011

That vs which

During a very enjoyable afternoon of internet browsing, I image-googled 'that vs which', and this image came up:



Mysterious.


So, when do you use that, and when do you use which?

The easiest way to remember how to use these two words correctly is to remember that you use that for a restrictive clause, and which for everything else.

A restrictive clause is a clause that limits what is being talked about. For example:

Dogs that bark get kidnapped around here.

In these clauses, you can't just leave out the bit about barking, because the kind of dogs we are talking about is restricted to dogs that bark.

However, if you say:

Dogs, which bark, get kidnapped around here

It means that it is not just dogs that bark that get kidnapped, but pretty much any dog that gets kidnapped. The barking bit is just extra information that might give you when they are overly interested in details.

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