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Subject:Re: It's what It's. OH THAT ONE !! From:"Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com> To:techwr-l Date:Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:49:23 +1100
Elizabeth O'Shea wrote:
> I'd like to reiterate that, when writing technical documentation for a
> European as well as a US audience, we should always use the very clear
> 'house that jack built' and always clarify the ambiguous 'house which
> Jack built', whether our audience is 'educated' or not.
I would endorse that suggestion, although I see nothing
ambiguous about "The house which Jack built", nor about
the thousands of similar usages by expert writers, both
British and American, that one can easily set forward as
examples.
Note, however, that most of the time neither "which"
nor "that" is really needed in restrictive clauses: