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Links in this essay will take you to information about the usage experts and their work. Numbers in parentheses are page references.
To read about this topic in The Bedford
Handbook, see section
23e. |
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Which is clearly impolite as
a substitute for who, but what about that?
On this matter, opinions are somewhat divided.
Surprisingly, many
experts see nothing wrong with using that to
refer to a person, as in We hope to hire a landscape
designer that has experience with rock gardens.
The American Heritage Book of English Usage
is especially adamant in defending this usage:
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.
(40)
Richard Lederer and
Richard Dowis acknowledge the historical precedent but
claim that “most modern stylists use who when
referring to a person and that when referring to
a thing” (50). Bryan Garner agrees that editors “tend to
prefer” who (695).
In contemporary
English, says Wilson Follett, the word that
“carries a thing-like connotation” (327). For this
reason, referring to a person as a that can seem
dehumanizing. Also, says Follett, using that for
who can lead to awkwardness in sentences
containing other uses of that. He quotes part of
a sentence to illustrate his point:
. . . fully persuaded that children
that undergo the handicap of teachers that
have only a perfunctory grasp of these fundamentals are
to be pitied. (326)
Surely children who and teachers who
would be more graceful phrasing.
Conclusion: Though
we may get away with using an occasional that for
who, on the whole it’s safer to stick with
who. Some readers will object to
that—finding it an impolite way to refer to a
person—but no one will find fault with
who.
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