RelativeClauses

There are two types of relative clause

Identifying

An identifying relative clause identifies, classifies or defines a noun

Do you know anyone who designs websites?

Have you seen the DVD I bought yesterday?

A non-identifying relative clause gives us extra information about something already identified

James Reed, who is a Harvard professor, will be the main speaker at the conference.

He was born in Sheffield, which is one of the UK's biggest cities.

A relative clause begins with a relative pronoun. We use who for people and which for things. We do not use that for relative clause

In an identifying relative clause, we can also often use that for both people and things.

There are many people who/that have never used a computer

I need some software which/that can edit songs.

In formal language we can use whom for a person who is the object of a relative cause.

This is the person who/whom I told you about.

To whom it may concern...

We use whose to talk about possession.

Is that the person whose party we went to last week?

In an identifying relative clause, we can leave out the relative pronoun when it is the object of the relative clause.

This is the book I was telling you about

This is the book which I was telling you about

In a non-identifying relative clause, we use commas to separate the clause fron the rest of the sentence,

Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was one of the founders of Apple

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Page last modified on November 17, 2021, at 03:04 PM