We were fine-tooth combing our portfolio book, searching for any typos or misspellings, and as luck (or smart business decisions) would have it, we’ve got a couple of grammar nerds in the office. Correcting someone’s grammar in a friendly setting can be seen as confrontational, but where business is concerned, we feel it’s vital.

We came across the word “that” in a restrictive clause, and we weren’t sure if it was more proper to use “that” or “which.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure until just now what a restrictive clause is. I love words, but I certainly hated grammar back in 7th grade; somehow teachers found a way to make learning anything dull. Fortunately, I have the world’s most powerful research tool ever devised literally at my fingertips. This is the article I found which goes over the disctinction between “that” and “which” in great detail. But I will summarize using as little technical jargon as I can:

“Which” is not used to specify the particular object you’re talking about. It is to be used more as a way of providing additional information. You could almost add a silent “by the way” to help explain it, as in: “Our project plan, which (by the way) is finished, can be distributed.” Conversely, you’d want to use “that” in the following manner: “Please distribute the project plan that was finished.”

You never know if your client is as big a stickler as some of us are. It couldn’t hurt to be prepared.