by Weston Ochse


Do any of you have the WHODAT Pet Peeve? Do you just hate it when who is used in place of that or which and vice versa? Then grit your teeth and check this out.

The man that ran down the street is my brother.

The car who ran into the man was driven by my sister.

My brother and sister, them which were involved in the accident, died horrifically when their car struck the delivery van containing two dozen dwarf monkeys from Indonesia.

Besides this being a lesson in bad driving, not running down the middle of the street, and never transporting Indonesian dwarf monkeys in delivery vans, these exemplar sentences also provide clear cut examples of a common error in sentence construction. Who vs That (or the WHODAT) choice is commonly mistaken by writers both new and old. I see the mistake repeated on television or at the movies at least once every ten minutes. I read it in newspapers everyday. Today in our classified section there was this: Custom Home Builder Looking for an Entry Level Employee that is familiar with new home construction. Novels are rife with the WHODAT error as well, sometimes to distraction. In fact some of our most famous novelists have broken the sanctity of the WHODAT Covenant in the titles.

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain

The Man that was Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe

So here’s the rule as explained succinctly by Vo-cab Vitamins:

Rule 1. Who refers to people. That and which refer to groups or things.

Examples Glen is the one who rescued the bird.
She belongs to an organization that specializes in saving endangered species.

Rule 2. That introduces essential clauses while which introduces nonessential clauses.

Examples I do not like editorials that argue for racial differences in intelligence.
We would not know which editorials were being discussed without the that clause.

The editorial arguing for racial differences in intelligence, which appeared in the Sunday newspaper, upset me.
The editorial is already identified. Therefore, which begins a nonessential clause.

NOTE: Essential clauses do not have commas surrounding them while nonessential clauses do contain commas.

Rule 3. If that has already been used in the sentence, use which to introduce the essential clause that follows.

Example That is a decision which you must live with for the rest of your life.

Rule 4. If the essential clause starts with this, that, these, or those, use which to connect.

Example Those ideas which were discussed on Tuesday will be put in the minutes of the meeting.

Even better The ideas discussed on Tuesday will be . . .

So the way the exemplar sentences should read are:

The man who ran down the street is my brother.

The car that ran into the man was driven by my sister.

My brother and sister, who were involved in the accident, died horrifically when their car struck the delivery van containing two dozen dwarf monkeys from Indonesia.

So free yourself from the WHODAT Conundrum, go forth and multiply like Indonesian dwarf monkeys and spread the word.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 2:16 am.
Categories: Uncategorized.

12 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Sully

    Thanks, Weston. And I see you’ve taken the brave step of opting for the new posting format which is supposed to allow more colors and dodads (I was too chicken).

    – Sully (Thomas Sullivan)

    Jan 19th, 2007

  2. David Niall Wilson

    I find your use of the new system encouraging. One of the blogs I’m involved with doesn’t allow me to switch, and I feared it was THIS blog, but apparently not…so off I go to figure out which one is screwing me up!

    On the that/vs/who battle..

    In the defense of Poe, and not of Twain, he was referring to the man more in the context of a thing that was used up than as a man…may be semantics, but I believe it is POSSIBLE that he did it on purpose…

    DNW

    Jan 19th, 2007

  3. Elizabeth Massie

    Yeah, I see “that” instead of “who” more often now. It’s slipping on by, just like the apostrophe before the “s” at the end of a plural noun (that drives me nuts!) The more people see it incorrectly and without correction, the more it will continue to slip by, until, oh, 25 years from now, it will be acceptable (except by a few editors, authors, and academics) to write “The girl that stole the blue shoe’s was arrested last night with the good’s in her apartment.” People will be too lazy (or too busy?) to care.

    Sigh.

    Beth

    Jan 19th, 2007

  4. Janet Berliner

    Now please do lay/lie, than/then, bring/take. –J.

    Jan 19th, 2007

  5. Anonymous

    Weston, I love your blog - especially this grammar item. I agree with Janet above, please do lay/lie, etc…. :)

    Best,
    J.F.

    Jan 19th, 2007

  6. Cathy VanPatten

    Don’t get me started on the that/which/who thang, not to mention the whole who/whom conundrum.

    As much as I would hate to see such distinctions bite the dust (I make my living from knowing the difference and correcting such errors, after all), I fear that Beth is right. That and which will eventually become interchangeable, with who thrown into the mix for variety only. I fear we’ve already lost the who/whom battle. Sigh…the price we pay for a robust and widely used language.

    I am NOT giving up the fight against errant apostrophes and quotation marks, however. One has to draw the line somewhere.

    Jan 19th, 2007

  7. cesarcarlos

    I remember back when I was in school, getting clear the use of “which” and “who”, while I always believed “that” was an alternative in either case. I never felt comfortable using “that” instead of “who” but, while sometimes it was clear to me, there wer times when I wasn’t sure if “that” or “which” was needed. Thanks for making things clear!

    Cesar

    Jan 19th, 2007

  8. Weston

    Thanks folks. I think Beth is right too. Common use is going to let it slip until there’s no difference between the two. Still, until then and until editors say it’s okay to let them slip, I’m gonna watch my whodats.

    Jan 19th, 2007

  9. George R Taylor

    Stop making fun of my bad grammar, Weston! ;)

    Thanks for the essay.:=)

    Jan 19th, 2007

  10. Anonymous

    Thanks for going into these, Wes. Them are bugaboos what drives me absolutely bonkers.

    –M

    Jan 20th, 2007

  11. Anonymous

    Wes, aka The Grammar Doc - You keep me on my toes, my friend. Thanks so much for the WHODAT reminder and the excellent explanations.

    Best Always,
    Fran

    Jan 21st, 2007

  12. John B. Rosenman

    Good essay, Weston, and it’s definitely needed.

    Lie/lay — I sometimes think the battle has long since been lost. On tv, especially in soap operas, I often see the objective and nominative cases confused by the writers. “That’s a matter for Tom and he.”

    Quick, fortify the walls. The barbarians are at our gates!

    Jan 21st, 2007

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