Back to the Basics: ‘That’ vs. ‘Which’

by DJNY 10:28 0 comments

Before you can even think about a high score, you need to build a solid foundation. There are certain things that you just can’t ignore. OR should it be: There are certain things which you just can’t ignore? How do you know? Sometimes even if something sounds right, doesn’t mean it is right! Let us understand when we should use ‘that’ and when we should use ‘which’.

If a clause provides vital information, without which the sentence will not be complete, we use ‘That’.

If a clause provides non-vital information, without which the sentence still be complete, we use ‘Which’.

For example, “Country X has banned the book Y, which has captivated the world’s attention.”

If you omit the “which” clause, i.e. “which has captivated the world’s attention”, you still get a perfectly meaningful sentence, i.e. “Country X has banned the book Y.”

Now, let us look at a sentence that uses ‘that’.

“The book that has captivated the world’s attention has been banned in country X”

If you omit the part following that, you don’t even get a sentence. You only get “The book”!

Of course, grammatically that is not the only criteria. But, on the GMAT you can easily spot whether the sentence can “survive” without a modifying clause or not using the above criteria.

Clauses using ‘that’ are called restrictive clauses, because they restrict the scope of the sentence. Clauses using ‘which’ are called non-restrictive clauses, because they don’t restrict the scope of the sentence.

But, you don’t need jargon for now. These are the basics. There are some exceptions to the above rules, which I will cover when we get to more advanced concepts.