Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Grammar Notes
Who, that and which
Who refers to people and which to things. That much is easy. That is a
little harder. In defining relatives, it can be used both for people and
things. In extra information relatives, you cannot use it.
Leaving out the relative pronoun
Sometimes, we can leave out the relative pronoun in defining relative
clauses. This happens when the relative is the object. So, in
However, it does not seem appropriate for a company to promote every
member of staf [that] it has employed for a long time.
That can be left out. However, in
However, it does not seem appropriate for every member of
staf that has employed for a long time to be promoted.
That cannot be left out because it is the subject of the verb to be
promoted.
Punctuation
You always need to use commas in extra information relatives.
Sometimes it helps to think of these commas as brackets (), as all you
are doing is giving non-essential info of the type you might use
brackets for. So
Some problems
1. Dont use to many relatives
Relatives are quite complex for a reader to process/understand. It is not
a good idea to fill your essay with too many relatives as it will be harder
to understand. I also suggest trying to avoid using more than one
relative per sentence.
is more natural to leave the preposition after the verb. Consider these 2
sentences:
This can happen if the company to which they move is a competitor in
the same field.
This can happen if the company which they move to is a competitor in
the same field.
For me, the first sentence is very awkward and it is best to avoid this
construction.