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I am writing something and I am confused as to which one of these below are correct: "I am often called as one of the society's masses, that/who enjoys helping people with their..."

Also, should there be a comma right before it as I highlighted as well? I would greatly appreciate the help here!

One_Island
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1 Answers1

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Totally irrelevant to meaning. With human head nouns it's a free choice between wh-relatives and that-relatives: "one of society's masses who enjoys helping people" and "one of society's masses that enjoys helping people" show no semantic differences, and no syntactic differences other than what follows from "that" not being a pronoun ("one of society's masses to whom the letter was sent" is grammatical but "one of society's masses to that the letter was sent" is of course not).

That advice is based on the assumption that your example is of a restrictive relative clause (the kind that doesn't need a comma) which it seems to be. But in constructions containing a non-restrictive relative clause (the kind where a comma is required), the situation is different. This might help you spot the difference:

[1] "Politicians who/that make extravagant promises aren't trusted". [restrictive]

[2] "Politicians, who make extravagant promises, aren't trusted". [non-restrictive]

In [1] the relative clause in bold is of the restrictive kind, that is to say it restricts our understanding of which politicians are being referred to. It's an integral part of the larger message. It's not saying that the lack of trust applies to all politicians, but just the ones who make extravagant promises, hence its name 'restrictive', and the absence of a comma.

In [2], by contrast, the property of not being trusted applies to all politicians in general. It doesn't pick out any particular group of them, like [1] does, hence its name 'non-restrictive'. Think of the non-restrictive kind as providing information that is supplemental to that expressed in the rest of the sentence. It's irrelevant to our understanding that politicians in general aren't trusted. Which is why it's set of with commas (or sometimes dashes).

In the case of restrictive relatives like [1], it is perfectly okay to use "who" or "that", which is what I meant be 'free choice'. But with non-restrictive ones (the kind with a comma) like [2], "that" is not normally permitted and you should stick with "who".

(Incidentally, the words "as" and "the" in "as one of the society's masses" look dodgy to me. Best get rid of them!)

BillJ
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  • True, but the principle question is far from new here. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '15 at 12:12
  • But - If it wasn't a restrictive relative clause then the OP would be best advised not to use that. Because many relative clauses are non-restrictive, your advice could be confusing or, in fact ,plain wrong. So you might want a little edit there :) – Araucaria - Him Nov 14 '15 at 13:34
  • (not my downvote, btw). – Araucaria - Him Nov 14 '15 at 13:40
  • @EdwinAshworth Partially true, because it's only true for restrictive relative clauses. – Araucaria - Him Nov 14 '15 at 13:44
  • As Bill implies, OP's example is almost certainly a restrictive relative, wrongly afforded a comma. He's answering OP's question, but I agree that he needs your caveat in his first paragraph. (Not my downvote either; he's far too new here to penalise for not recognising what's an obvious duplicate candidate. I do seem to remember the name from another site, though, which means he probably made good contributions.) – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '15 at 14:30
  • Point taken; I have edited my reply to take account of the contrast between restrictive and non-restrictive relatives. – BillJ Nov 14 '15 at 16:23