The New Exponent

By Ciara Frisbie
Staff Writer

Photo by Ciara Frisbie

The average person may not believe that the words who and that are frequently misused; however, to the experienced grammar stickler, mistakes like these stick out like a sore thumb. If used incorrectly when talking about another person, you may find that you are actually making an insulting comment. Needless to say, you want to use who when referring to a person and that when referring to an object. Let’s look at some examples:

It is incorrect to say, “The person that robbed the museum was John Smith.” The correct way for this to be stated is, “The person who robbed the museum was John Smith.” Referring to John Smith as a that is offensive (even if he is a crook) because he is a human, not an object. An example of using that correctly could be, “It is the restaurant on the corner that has the best soup.”

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