One fix suggested to me was to replace ", which" with "that" wholesale. I went with it. But it turns out that it's wrong! The 'pedia entry for comma provides a nice counter-example with these two sentences:
I cut down all the trees, which were over six feet tall.
I cut down all the trees that were over six feet tall.
I cut down all the trees that were over six feet tall.
In the first case, there are no trees left standing. In the second, any trees that were under six feet were not cut down. I think this is restrictive versus non-restrictive usage.
[Update 2 Feb 2008 – From an English professor who seems to identify me as one of the worst writers in the world:
A paradoxical mnemonic: use that to tell which, and which to tell that.]
5 comments:
HYPERBATON!!!!! That for me is a discovery of a word most amazing.
Oh, and this is one of my favorite sites:
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html
NF, will you teach me how to make that address just a link? Like with a word? I'm clueless.
I support your right to use "choppy" as an adverb.
Would you agree that its only the comma, and certainly not the choice of "which" versus "that", that distinguishes those two sentences?
Would you agree that its only the comma, and certainly not the choice of "which" versus "that", which distinguishes those two sentences?
I'm going to go ahead and assert that I was using choppy as a noun.
I do think the introduction of the comma renders the clause non-restrictive. Isn't the use of which, however, necessarily accompanied by the comma? So which must have a comma, but that yields a valid sentence with or without the comma. That with a comma and without a comma mean different things, though.
The lumberjack example serves as a counter-example to a rule I had adopted. I cannot formulate the exception, so I'll resign myself to double-checking.
No, I believe that in both of your example sentences you could exchange that and which and not change the meaning. It's merely a convention (perhaps too strongly enforced by some people...) to use the comma/which combination, but not some grammatical rule.
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