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The Weltchek Weekly

Your Bulletin for Better Business Writing

 
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Your Bulletin for Better Business Writing

Which vs. That

  • Category: Edit
  • |
  • On January 16, 2018

Enclosed is an Action Plan for the Administration of President Donald J. Trump, which will help in getting America’s coal miners back to work.

That was the opening line in a letter to Vice President Pence from the head of Murray Energy.

Environmental concerns aside, the sentence should have read, Enclosed is an action plan for the administration of President Donald J. Trump that will help get America’s coal miners back to work.

To be grammatically correct, which should be that, without a preceding comma. Which introduces disposable information, bracketed by commas, that could be dropped from a sentence; that introduces information critical to the meaning of a sentence and doesn’t take commas. Murray Energy’s action plan is all about getting coal miners back to work, so the information is essential to the sentence’s meaning and needs to be introduced with that.  

Here’s how might you use which: The action plan, which Vice President Pence received last week, promises to get coal miners back to work. The fact that Mr. Pence got the plan last week is secondary information.  Drop it and the sentence still stands.

In other edits, administration belongs in lower case, and while will help in getting isn’t wrong, will help get is stronger. More in line with an action plan.

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