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Alexandra Kirk's avatar

Can you share the difference you mentioned between the use of that and which?

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Lucy Shaw's avatar

Absolutely! This was the advice a reader shared with me:

Original sentence: "The plant has a 40-year contract to buy coal from a local mine, that/WHICH employs over 2,000 people...

"That" is a restrictive word. "The dog that is black is ours." It defines which of the many dogs are ours, the one that is black.

"Which" explains something about what you just referred to. "That dog that is black, which doesn’t bite by the way." Which could usually have a comma in front of it.

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Ricardo Ramirez's avatar

Might be a stretch / not applicable to your objectives, but Benjamin Franklin - a prolific writer - resorted to the use of pseudonyms throughout his career and especially at his early days to get the Stuff Ben Wrote published. The success came from really embodying the characters he created with excruciating detail, such that the editors and readers truly felt the psyche of such characters in the way he wrote.

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