“That” or Not “That”…That Is the Question!

There is a movement afoot in publishing and academic circles to remove “unnecessary” instances of the word that from writing. The problem is that it is difficult to codify when that is unnecessary and when it isn’t. For example, more than half of the “experts” would omit my use of that between “problem is” and “it” in the previous sentence, substituting a comma. This style supposedly streamlines writing, but my grammar teachers called that kind of “streamlining” a comma-splice and awarded Fs for it.

I find that removing that from many sentences actually hinders the readability of the piece, as the reader has to stop and figure out what the author is trying to say. For example, “Mary saw John was upset Amy had left.” That sentence is confusing as it stands, because the eye naturally pauses at a complete thought….”Mary saw John.” Then it hits “was upset” and your brain says “Hunh?! Try that again!” If you merely insert the conjunctive that into the sentence, it’s a lot easier to understand, and the sentence stops sounding like a run-on: “Mary saw that John was upset that (or because) Amy had left.”

The word that has a necessary and vital role in English, and those who insist on leaving it out for no better reason than to “streamline” are, at best, brainless twits who don’t know the difference between formal written English and spoken English. They aren’t the same — for good reason.

Tags: conjunctions, pronoun, that, usage