Lately I have been seeing a lot of sentences that annoy me. they look like this: "John is a singer that is quite loud." I'm certain that this should be "John is a singer who is quite loud." The problem is that I'm seeing this substitution of 'that' for pronouns in these sentences so often that I'm wondering if I'm wrong?
grammar problem
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Comments
Relative pronouns
Normally in a relative clause, when referring to a person, one should use who. In the case of objects, animals, or a class or group of people, use that. The question that begs an answer in your example is what antecedent the pronoun is in agreement with. It could refer to 'John', the person, or 'singer', a class of people. In summary, both 'who' and 'that' are grammatically correct. The better solution is to just say, "John sings quite loudly." Just my 2 cents.
Sammy
Sammy
You're not wrong.
"Who" is the correct word in that sentence. "That" is routinely used, and it's not a new thing. It's rather old, in fact.
Somewhere, a long time ago, I saw a combination of "their", "there", and "they're" into one word, as a way of thumbing one's nose at grammar Nazis. I never could find it.
-- Daphne Xu
I used to
Get upset a lot about tense, misuse of words, punctuation and other lack of skills. Then I relaxed and just appreciated the attempt and enjoyed the content. I believe one of our most prolific writers has English as a second language. Cut them a break and correct as you read. I have done a lot of free editing but for some authors I won't even try. I will read it though for the entertainment.
I guess Sammy C's explanation is correct
but every time I come across it I'm jarred right out of the flow of the story. The same thing happens when I come across a miss-used homonym. Daphne, last year someone gave me a tee-shirt saying; There their they're.
One Word
Actually, the three words were mashed together into one in the picture I recall.
Rose with the nose chose her clothes and hose, and proceeded to lose them. I'm trying to rein in my visceral reaction to seeing "lose" written as "loose". On the other hand, seeing tongue written to rhyme with lounge is truly disturbing.
Also, both I and someone I was debating got caught referring to "ad homonym" attacks.
-- Daphne Xu