Use “who” only to refer to people.

Maria and Julie are two sisters that equally share household responsibilities.

Maria and Julie are two sisters who equally share household responsibilities.

Use “which” and “that” to refer to things.

Use “that” in restrictive clauses–clauses that restrict the meaning of the noun in some way.

The house that caught fire is down the block from mine.

Here, we need to know that the house caught fire in order to know which house we are talking about;  in other words, the identity of the house is restricted by the fact that it is the one that caught fire, rather than any of the other houses that are also down the block from mine.

Use “which,” on the other hand, to refer to non-restrictive clauses–clauses that tell us something incidental about a subject, but don’t restrict the meaning of that subject.  In other words, use “which” for non-essential information.

The house, which caught fire last year, is painted blue and yellow.

Here, the information that the house caught fire is merely an aside; we don’t need to know it in order to know that we are talking about the blue and yellow house.

Notice that the clause containing “that” is not set off by commas, whereas the clause containing “which” is set off by commas.  Commas around a clause are another clue that the clause is non-restrictive, an indication to use “which.”

Here are a few more examples.

The candidate that who receives more votes will win the election.

The rock that she threw at the window is still on the front lawn.

The rock, which she threw at the window, was so heavy she needed two hands to hold it.

Pronouns are words that stand in for nouns—he, she, they, him, her, them, etc.  Depending on whether the pronoun is acting as a subject (performing the action in the sentence) or an object (the action is being performed to it) the pronoun will either take the subjective or objective case.

For example, in the sentence “Rick gave the book to Maria,” Rick is the subject because he performs the action of giving the book, whereas Maria is the object because she receives the action by being given the book. If we were to replace Rick and Maria with masculine and feminine pronouns, we would use the subjective “HE” to replace Rick and the objective “HER” to replace Maria.  The sentence would then be “He gave the book to her.”

Here is a chart to help you remember pronoun case of some common pronouns.

This rule helps to explain the trick we taught you yesterday (about selecting the proper pronoun in compound noun forms).  If you are a native English speaker, your ear recognizes the correct pronoun by sound, whereas if you are a non-native English speaker, you will need to memorize this chart to learn the appropriate case.

When I was younger, if I ever announced that “Me and Chrissy went to school,” my parents would immediately correct me: “Chrissy and I went to school.”  It can be hard to remember which pronoun is correct in these compound structures.  Here’s a tip for choosing the proper one.

Use your ear. Read the sentence without the noun and see which pronoun fits.

Let’s do a test using our previous example.  Me and Chrissy went to school.   Does “Me went to school” sound right?  Wouldn’t we say, “I went to school”?  Therefore, it should be “Chrissy and I went to school.”

Here are a few more examples.

Leigh and me will make the reservations. Incorrect.

Leigh and I will make the reservations. Correct!

Ali threw a party for Stephanie and I. Incorrect.

Ali threw a party for Stephanie and me. Correct.

Brian met David and I at the restaurant. Incorrect.

Brian met David and me at the restaurant. Correct.

If you are a native English speaker, your ear can be an excellent tool for distinguishing the proper pronoun case.  Just remove the compound structure to avoid being confused.

In our next post, we’ll go over the reason this trick works.