Continuing Ken Lammers’ concerns with how to distinguish restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, I have a little bit to add to what I said earlier.
I’ve checked several more writing handbooks, including the Harbrace College Handbook, the Little, Brown Handbook, the St. Martin’s Handbook, and The Careful Writer. (My editions are not as current as those to which I’ve linked.) All agree to a preference for using which to introduce only non-restrictive clauses, with the degree of preference ranging from “better” to “usually” to “some writers prefer,” but none of the handbooks is as firm as the Strunk and Whiteexcerpts I quoted earlier, and certainly none of them set forth an absolute rule.
The Careful Writer has this interesting note:
There are writers who have the notion that the relative that is colloquial[…],whereas the relative which is literary. That is a mistaken idea. Jespersen has put his finger on one cause of the error: “Who and which reminded scholars of the Latin pronouns and came to be looked upon as more refined or dignified than the more popular that.” To this day there are those who seem to feel that which is more stately.
I imagine the writers of Virginia’s statutes prefered the stately and Latinate which to the common that.
On the other hand, all these handbooks (and the Chicago Manual of Style) agree that non-restrictive clauses are always set off by commas.
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