That vs. Which

The distinction between “that” and “which” is a little blurry. In many cases, you can interchange them without confusing your reader. Even thoroughly experienced writers switch them around sometimes — the New York Times After Deadline blog this week found examples in the paper where writers had confused “that” and “which”. Of course, readers who know the difference will think a misplaced “which” rather awkward. Try this: which of the following sentences sounds better:

  • Mine is the one which has silver fenders
  • Mine is the one that has silver fenders

More likely than not, most of us would choose the second sentence. We use “which” when the information that follows isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence. For example:

 

 

  • Mine is the blue one, which Sarah gave me last week.
You can delete the entire “which” part and still have a perfectly sensible sentence. But if we wrote
  • Mine is the one that looks blue.
and deleted everything after “that”, we’d be left with the useless sentence “Mine is the one.” You might also notice that “which” goes with commas. A comma will sound quite awkward before “that”, as in
  • Mine is the one, that looks blue.
Of course, “that” and “which” are both multipurpose words. We don’t have much trouble with their other uses, though. We would never try to put a “which” in the sentence, “Bring me that spoon”, for example. Some things are simple.
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