| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
|
Page 40
|
| |
| omitting that
| | You can omit that in a relative clause when the subject of the clause is different from the word or phrase the clause refers to. Thus, you can say either the book that I was reading or the book I was reading. You can also omit that when it introduces a subordinate clause: I think we should try again. You should not omit that, however, when the subordinate clause begins with an adverbial phrase or anything other than the subject: She said that under no circumstances would she allow us to skip the meeting. The book argues that eventually the housing supply will increase. This last sentence would be ambiguous if that were omitted, since the adverb eventually could then be construed as modifying either argues or will increase. | 1 |
| that instead of
who
| | The man that wanted to talk to you just called back. Some people say that you can only use who and not that to introduce a restrictive relative clause that identifies a person. But that has been used in this way for centuries. It is a quintessential English usage, going back to the Old English period, and has been used by our best writers. So it is entirely acceptable to write either the man that wanted to talk to you or the man who wanted to talk to you. | 2 |
| that with the verb
doubt
| | For a discussion of when to use that after the verb doubt, see
doubt under Word Choice. | 3 |
| More at
this,
whatever,
which, and
who. | 4 |
there
| | “There once was a man from …” “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe …” Lovers of limericks and nursery rhymes are familiar with the anticipatory there that functions as a “dummy subject,” delaying the real subject until the end of the clause. In this use there is usually classified as a pronoun and is distinguished from its use as an adverb indicating location, as in There’s the glove I’ve been looking for. | 5 |
| According to the standard rule, when the pronoun there precedes a verb such as be, seem, or appear, the verb agrees in number with the following grammatical subject: There is a great Italian deli across the street. There are fabulous wildflowers in the hills. There seems to be a blueberry pie cooking in the kitchen. There seem to be a few trees between the green and me. But people often disregard this rule and use a singular verb with a plural subject, especially when speaking or when using the contraction there’s. The Usage Panel dislikes this construction, however. Seventy-nine percent reject the sentence There’s only three things you need to know about this book. But when there’s is followed by a compound subject whose first element is singular, the panel feels differently. Fifty-six percent of the Usage Panel accepts the sentence In each of us there’s a dreamer and a realist, and 32 percent more accept it in informal usage. The panel is even more accepting of the sentence When you get to the stop light, there’s a gas station on the left and a grocery store on the right; 58 percent accept it in formal usage, while 37 percent more accept it in informal usage. Although this usage would seem to violate the rules of subject and verb agreement, the attraction of the verb to the singular noun phrase following it is so strong that it is hard to avoid the construction entirely. | 6 |
| More at
subject and verb agreement. | 7 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
|
|
