this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
7 points (100.0% liked)

Writing

1989 readers
1 users here now

A specific community for original shortform and longform writing, stories, worldbuilding, and other stuff of that nature.

Subcommunity of Creative

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
mint@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
7
"which" vs "this" (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Zagaroth@beehaw.org to c/writing@beehaw.org
14 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So, Grammarly is correcting me a lot on a phrase I tend to use, and I don't entirely understand the difference.

On a sentence that expands upon a previous sentence in dialog, I tend to have a character say "Which means [...]"

Grammarly wants to fix this to be "This means [...]"

It's become clear to me that I tend to use 'which' instead of 'this' when speaking, but I am not sure why one is preferred use over the other.

Can anyone offer me some insight? I already tried googling "which vs this", but I got results for "which vs that" instead, which is an entirely different use case.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] silent_g@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

If it's dialog, then you can write it however your character speaks. Your characters are allowed to make mistakes when speaking. "This means..." comes across like a TED Talk to me. "Which means..." sounds more casual and conversational. And I would use "That means..." if it's someone expanding/responding to someone else's statement.

"The device is flashing red!" Said Frank. "That means we're all going to die!" Said Steve.

"I'm feeling congested, which means I might be getting sick."

"The socioeconomic climate of the place is bad. This means bad things are going to happen."

It all depends on who is talking and what they're saying. As a narrator, you are also allowed to speak in your own voice when writing. Grammar shouldn't always be homogenous and strict, especially if you're making art.