this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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"which" vs "this" (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Zagaroth@beehaw.org to c/writing@beehaw.org
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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.

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[–] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I could be wrong here, but I think the issue lies in starting a sentence with which. Whereas which would be used in the middle of a sentence. For starting a sentence, this should be used.

Disclaimer: I am not a writer. I just pretend that I know Grammar rules fairly decently.

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m not completely confident, either, but I was thinking the same thing. It’s not okay to start a sentence with “which”, but if the period between sentences was a comma instead, then it would be perfectly fine.

[–] Zagaroth@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

So this sounds like it's one of those arbitrary technicalities that isn't a big deal, in a single flow of dialog at least. When a character is speaking, the difference between a period and a comma is a convention of the written medium, in the spoken word it's not such a clear delineation.

Now, if another character was responding to what the first character said, "this" over "which" seems like it might be more important.