Don’t confuse your ‘thats’

‘that’ can have several different functions in a clause:

1. Defining relative pronoun

When ‘that’ is a defining relative pronoun, it does not take a comma before it.
(In British English, ‘which’ is more commonly used.)

Example from the headlines in the BBC today: 
A funeral that brought together 400,000 mourners

2.Structural

In some European languages, including German and Russian, ‘that’ is followed by a comma in expressions such as “they said that…”; in English it is not.
NB: An exception would be an emphatic ‘that’, such as Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be, that is the question”.

Examples of correct usage: 
Officials tell Associated Press that the plan would involve troops staying there for an unspecified amount of time

Su Yu-Xin scours mines and federal lands for materials to carefully craft her own pigments in a Los Angeles workspace that’s part studio, part science lab.

• Determiner or pronoun

‘that’ can have several different functions in a clause:

1.Defining relative pronoun

When ‘that’ is a defining relative pronoun, it does not take a comma before it.
(In British English, ‘which’ is more commonly used.)

Example from the headlines in the BBC today: 
A funeral that brought together 400,000 mourners

2. Structural

In some European languages, including German and Russian, ‘that’ is followed by a comma in expressions such as “they said that…”; in English it is not.
NB: An exception would be an emphatic ‘that’, such as Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be, that is the question”.

Examples of correct usage: 
Officials tell Associated Press that the plan would involve troops staying there for an unspecified amount of time

Su Yu-Xin scours mines and federal lands for materials to carefully craft her own pigments in a Los Angeles workspace that’s part studio, part science lab.

3. Determiner or pronoun

‘that’ as referring to something specific or back to a whole clause (determiner and pronoun)

Examples of correct usage:

Erin Patterson’s estranged husband has denied asking her “is that what you used to poison them?” in the days immediately after a deadly mushroom lunch. (pronoun referring back to a clause)

If he gets that job in London, he’ll be able to visit us more often. (determiner)

Test it out!

These eight sentences are all from an article in the Guardian about an artist, Su Yu-Xun: “The landscape artist who makes her paint from pearls, crystals and volcanic dust”.

Instructions: The instances of ‘that’ are underlined. Decide which grammatical function ‘that’ has. Is ‘that’ a relative clause (RC), a determiner (D) or pronoun (P), or a structural ‘that’(S)?

You can find the answer key below.

1. While in art school in London, Su Yu-Xin calculated that most painters used one of five brands of high-end oil paint, and that each brand produced only about 60 colours.
   
   
2. “That’s really scary,” the Slade graduate said. “It’s like all the top chefs in the world shop from the same grocery store.”
   
   
3. Back then, when students arrived at the studio, “you take off your shoes, and then grind your ink. And we did that every day fresh,” she said.
   
   
4. “[Georgia] O’Keefe – she painted the mountains so sharp, and that’s because there’s no water in the air, so you get to see really far.”
   
   
5. Su is interested in the geopolitics of colour itself, and the ways that the history of geography, trade, government and empire shape the fundamental building blocks of artists’ craft.
   
   
6. In England, certain famous paint shades are inseparable from the history of empire, like JMW Turner’s “Indian Yellow”, made from the urine of cows in India that were only fed mango leaves, or “Mummy Brown”, made from ground-up human remains.
   
   
7. She would learn later that students in mainland China tended to use lead white paint, not the gofun white she always used.
   
   
8. … She channelled some of that struggle into an obsessive collection of gems and minerals.

 Answer key

1. (S) x 2
2. (P)
3. (P)
4. (RC)
5. (RC)
6. (RC)
7. (S)
8. (D)

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Author: Carol Waites

Presentation/editing by Christina O’Shaughnessy 
https://worldwidewriting.org/

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Carol Waites (PhD)
Email: carolswritingtips@gmail.com
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