Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 August 21

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August 21

What about that?

Are there any rules or guidelines about when to use, or not use, "that"? Although I'm not as bad as I once was, I found that I overused "that" a lot, especially in lengthy writings. What I would do, after writing, remove every "that" and read the results, then put back only those "that" that seemed absolutely necessary. But, I mainly relied on intuition, and didn't understand why sometimes it was needed, and other times not. --2606:A000:4C0C:E200:296A:CC64:7945:8C5F (talk) 21:38, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

See English relative clauses for the gory details - in particular, Zero relative pronoun for omission of "that". Tevildo (talk) 22:10, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the link (never heard of "Zero relative pronoun" before). --2606:A000:4C0C:E200:296A:CC64:7945:8C5F (talk) 22:22, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Keep in mind it's ultimately subjective, and up to the house style guide. For example, in scientific writing, many editors and writers feel that it is better to have a "that" that is not strictly necessary, rather than the potential confusion that could be caused by omission. In high school composition class, too many "that"s might be seen as distracting or unwieldy. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:20, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

There is one commonly-seen case where it's definitely wrong:

• I realised that if I made this error again that I'd be disqualified.

The first 'that' is more or less mandatory, but the second one is definitely wrong. And that applies even if you choose not to use the first 'that'. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:09, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Do you have a citation for your assertion that this usage is "definitely wrong"? It looks perfectly fine to me. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary gives a citation "I never could have realized that I should have borne the parting so well". "Realize" was apparently not used in this sense in Shakespeare's time, but he has such usages as "I am made to understand that you have lent him visitation" (Measure for Measure) and "Doth Silvia know that I am banished?" (Two Gentlemen of Verona). And the Corpus of Global Web Based English lists 47,273 occurrences of "realize that", and a further 25,924 occurrences of "realized that". Frankly I can't understand what you are objecting to about this usage. Does it apply only to the word "realize"? CodeTalker (talk) 01:36, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Those are all for the unobjectionable first "that" in Jack's sentence. The problem is with the second "that":

• "I realised that X." (Or "understood", "discovered", "believed", etc - there's nothing special about "realise" here).
• X = "If I made this error again, I'd be disqualified", not "If I made this error again, that I'd be disqualified." Tevildo (talk) 08:13, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:35, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

I tolerate "I realized, if I made this error again, that I'd be disqualified"; but that before the condition is better (see Tevildo), and double that is clearly wrong, evidence of a speaker getting lost on the way. —Tamfang (talk) 02:14, 25 August 2016 (UTC)