A Word, Please: “Who,” “that” more interchangeable than you might think
People. People who need people. They’re the luckiest people in the world, according to some people. But according to other people, it’s not the people who need people but the people “that” need people who win.
OK, I’ll drop the funny girl business and explain.
There’s a lot of confusion about how to choose between “who” and “that.” Many people believe that “who” is the only way to go when referring to humans. In their view, “people who need people” is correct and “people that need people” is wrong.
But just this week I got an email from a reader who was taught that “people that need people” is the only correct option.
Who’s right? None of them, because sometimes “that” and “who” are interchangeable.
The more common belief that “that” can’t refer to people is good advice stretched too far. It’s based on the idea that “who” is better when referring to people because it’s specific to people. You can’t use it for inanimate objects, as in “The shirt who was on his back.” So “who” imbues its antecedent with a pulse, making it more human and the whole sentence more vivid.
That’s why I always prefer “who” to refer to humans. But folks who will tell you that you can’t use “that” for humans are out of line. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has a usage note on this very subject, saying “‘that’ refers to persons or things.”
Personally, the only time I would opt for “that” to refer to people is when the alternative is not “who” but “whom.”
“Who” is a subject pronoun and “whom” is an object pronoun. For example, in “the man whom I hired,” you need the object form “whom” and not the subject form “who” because it’s functioning as the object of the verb “hired.”
But sometimes “whom” is just too formal to be appropriate. That leaves two options: You can replace “whom” with “that,” or you can omit the pronoun altogether: “the man I hired.” This omission is grammatical, by the way. It even has a name. It’s called the “zero relative” because you’re leaving out the relative pronoun “that.”
Relative pronouns are an exclusive club, containing only “that,” “which,” “who” and its alter-ego “whom.” These words wear many hats, functioning as different parts of speech depending on how they’re used in a sentence.
For example, “who” can be a personal pronoun, as in “Who gave you that rose?” But it is categorized as a relative pronoun when used to introduce a relative clause, which is a clause that modifies the noun before it.
In “The car that he was driving was red,” the word “that” is the head of the relative clause “that he was driving,” which gives you more information about the noun “car.” It’s telling you which car we’re talking about. So this relative clause, headed up by the relative pronoun “that,” is modifying the noun “car.”
Similarly, in “The car, which he was driving, was red,” the relative pronoun is “which.” Obviously, “which” has some different properties. Teamed up with commas, it signals that you don’t need to know he was driving the car to know which car we’re talking about. But the grammar still works the same way: The “which” clause still modifies the noun “car.”
In “the man whom I marry” and “the man who marries me,” same thing. The relative clause adds further information about the noun “man.” But if you don’t like the sound of that “whom,” replacing it with “that” is one option, no matter what people say.
JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.