January 27th, 2010
grammatical point that’s cropped up a couple of times this week.
Can ‘that’ be used in place of ‘who’?
Copy Editor Nick Howard has strong feelings on the point. He goes as far as insisting that “‘That’ does not refer to people”.
I disagree. I think it can do. Especially if you want to avoid re-using ‘who’ in only a few words.
Who do I mean? The Prime Minister that took us to war with Spain.
Or am I wrong? Who’s that disagreeing with me?
6:41 pm. Filed under: Blog, Words.
Author: Ben Locker.
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4 Responses to ““That” can refer to people”
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Hmm, tough one Ben. I think the example you’ve given is referring to a title, an office, rather than an individual.
I think it’s more specific than just when referring to a person – you wouldn’t use ‘that’ when referring to a name, but you would with a normal noun – so ‘the fellow that can barely string a sentence together’, but ‘John Prescott, who can barely string a sentence together’.
There’s a handful of clever relevant quotes about being excessively fussy, by chaps like Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain and GB Shaw, that I could trot out here. Except I can’t remember any of them right now…
Yes, I think you’re probably right. I tweeted this last night:
I’m one that does this/ I’m the one who does this. Is that it?
It’s also handy to avoid repeating ‘who’.
I almost always use ‘who’, but I do believe ‘that’ is sometimes acceptable or even better.
Ben, I think “that” does make people sound like objects. Anthony makes the point I was going to that the PM is a function, not a person.
In general it seems awkward, imprecise and slightly infantile-sounding. To me. But that may be my English ear (I have one of each!); it’s also a transatlantic issue. In the USA people routinely use “that” to mean “who”; I did it myself and didn’t hear myself doing it. You even see it in places like the New Yorker or the NYT. But even in the US I think it’s essentially a colloquialism and doesn’t work very well in print.