Common heretical uses of apostrophes and how to avoid them
Today I am Plain English-reviewing a glossary of curriculum terminology written by a major UK education body. It is full of poor grammar.
For example, the writer uses which where they should use that, but they are so oblivious to their error that they've inserted commas to fool the MS Word grammarcheck. This produces sentences like The part of the ( Read more... )
For example, the writer uses which where they should use that, but they are so oblivious to their error that they've inserted commas to fool the MS Word grammarcheck. This produces sentences like The part of the ( Read more... )
Interesting - as a non-native speaker I often wondered about this when - there is, of course, some kind of intuition about when to use them (which I hope I somehow managed to adopt more-or-less correctly) but whenever I asked a pro for a clear and simple rule the answer I got was that there isn't one. The best I read on this so far is this.
As for the apostrophes, yeah, that's a pretty stupid mistake to make - I got pretty good instruction on that one and I don't think I ever made a mistake, nor do any of the people I correspond with.
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“That” defines and “which” informs. If the following sentence did not have commas, the information in the “which” clause would form an essential part of the main statement, and “which “ would be replaced with “that”:
The book, which was on the table, was a present.
The book that was on the table was a present. (that is, as opposed to the book on the shelf, which was on loan)
it's actually the commas that make the difference, not whether you use which or that (although a which clause can't start with "that"). my impression is that US usage is much pickier about this than UK - i've seen plenty of examples from British publishers of the "the book which was on the table..." variety. and i have no problem with it myself, but i spend an awful lot of my working life changing it.
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RIGHT - The part of the curriculum that is compulsory for all students is called the national curriculum.
WRONG - The part of the curriculum which is compulsory for all students is called the statutory curriculum.
RIGHT - The national curriculum, which must be taught in all English schools, is often perceived as being overloaded with content.
WRONG - The national curriculum, that must be taught in all English schools, is often perceived as being overloaded with content.
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2. is technically wrong, but acceptable too, to me, because there is no problem with ambiguity of the meaning - it's clear, and that's the important thing.
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Using which rather than that, an alternative meaning emerges: that the curriculum is compulsory for all students and we're talking about a part of it called the statutory curriculum. Why we're talking about this part is in subsequent or previous sentences. eg,
One part of the curriculum is particularly controvertial. The part of the curriculum which is compulstory for all students is called the statutory curriculum.
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Generally, 'that' adds information and 'which' is parenthetical. (which is what that link says) but 'that' is acceptable for both, but you can't use 'which' in the adding information sense. 'Which' is only ever parenthetical.
i.e. The burrito that I had this morning, that (by the way) cost only two dollars, was the best I ever tasted ( ... )
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