It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences - June Casagrande 2010
Are your relatives essential? Relative clauses
In the last chapter, we saw how adverbs work as modifiers. They're similar to adjectives, which are also modifiers. A lot of people know that. But whole phrases and clauses can also be modifiers. As you'll see in this chapter and the two that follow, understanding phrases and clauses as modifiers is key to mastering the art of the sentence. We'll start with the easiest of these topics, relative clauses, before moving on to prepositional phrases in chapter 9 and participial phrases in chapter 10.
Let's look at how one successful pro uses relative clauses:
Wednesday had traded the Lincoln Town Car, which Shadow had liked to drive, for a lumbering and ancient Winnebago, which smelled pervasively and unmistakably of male cat, which he didn't enjoy driving at all.
I love this passage from Neil Caiman's American Gods because it's another example of how a writing no-no can be a total yes-yes in the right hands. The no-no in play is the stacking of one relative clause on top of another, which could result in something like this:
The house that Joe was living in, which had a furnace that burned only coal, which was becoming scarce in Virginia, which was ground zero for the nation's coal shortage, which was the result of a policy by the new president, who opposed coal mining and burning, which were causing too much pollution, which was choking the planet that desperately needed C02 reduction . . .
See how this can go on forever like some kind of cosmic nesting doll? With each added relative clause, we get further and further away from our main point, further down the rabbit hole of minutiae and minutiae about minutiae. We were talking about one character's house. But we got way off track. As such, overuse of relative clauses is disorienting at best and rude at worst. It's like telling the Reader, "We're talking about Joe's house and you need to remember that for a long time even as I mention lots of other things because, when I'm done, I'm not going to tell you again that we're talking about Joe's house. It's your job to remember." See what I mean by rude?
But Gaiman pulled off the feat of stacking his relative clauses. He used them to create a rhythm. He managed to underscore—almost musically—a fun irony: Shadow's nice Town Car had been replaced by a beat-up Winnebago that, adding insult to injury, reeked of cat spray. That's skillful writing. And skill is bred of understanding, or at the very least of practice. So let's take a minute to understand relative clauses and the words that make them: relative pronouns.
The relative pronouns, according to The Oxford English Grammar, are which, that, and who or whom. Some people include certain uses of where and when, but most authorities don't. Relative pronouns introduce relative clauses:
The computer, which had stopped working, was in the
garbage.
The machine that he bought was a piece of junk.
The man, whom she loved, had betrayed her.
Rudy, who had always loved her, committed suicide.
A relative clause postmodifies a noun. That's a fancy way of saying that it comes after a noun and describes it. So relative clauses are really modifiers that act like adjectives to describe, qualify, or limit some other word in the sentence.
In our first example, can you identify the noun that is being postmodified by the relative clause which had stopped working. It's computer. In the second sentence, the relative clause that he bought is modifying (qualifying) the machine. In the third sentence, the relative clause whom she loved modifies the man. And in the fourth sentence, the relative clause who had always loved her gives added description of Rudy.
Start seeing relative clauses as something akin to adjectives and start taking note of which word each relative clause points to, and you'll have a lot more power over how you use them. And remember, relative clauses are great tools for squeezing extra information into a sentence, but only if that information fits.
Compare these two sentences:
The new schedule will help reduce crowds over the closing weekend, which is traditionally the busiest.
The new schedule that will be implemented next year and that is the brainchild of Mr. Lawson, who founded the show in 1988, will help reduce the number of people who attend over the closing weekend, which is usually the biggest problem because it is traditionally the busiest weekend of the show that Lawson puts on.
That first example is fine. That second one needs to be broken up because our relative clauses are cramming in too much information:
The new schedule is the brainchild of Mr. Lawson, who founded the show in 1988. The schedule will help reduce the number of people who attend over the closing weekend, which is traditionally the busiest.
This revision still has relative clauses. But with just one per sentence, it now reads well.
Now look at this sentence:
He left early, which was fine by me.
Here, the relative clause that begins with which isn't pointing to a noun. It's pointing to a whole idea. These are sometimes called sentential relative clauses.
There are a few more things you should know about relative clauses, which I'll list here quickly before explaining each in full. First, relative clauses can be either restrictive or nonrestrictive. Second, this distinction is at the center of a controversy over how you can use the word which. Third, there exists something called the zero relative, which refers to the absence of a relative pronoun at the head of a relative clause. Fourth, sometimes it's easy to mistake a subordinating conjunction for a relative pronoun.
Restrictive and nonrestrictive refer to the job a clause performs in a sentence. A restrictive clause can't be removed from a sentence without harming the point of the main clause:
Any house that I buy must be yellow.
The relative clause here is that 1 buy. To test whether it's restrictive or nonrestrictive, take it out. You end up with
Any house must be yellow.
That just ain't so. And with the relative clause removed from our sentence, we can appreciate the big job it was doing. The relative clause told us which house must be yellow. Not just any house, but any house that I buy. Our clause takes the enormous group encompassed by any house and narrows it down—restricts it—to a smaller group: houses I could buy. Now compare that to
The house, which has termites, is yellow.
You can lift the relative clause right out of this sentence without any loss of meaning to the main clause. The main clause says, The house is yellow. That's perfectly logical all by itself. The fact that it has termites is extra information. It doesn't further specify which house we're talking about. It's not essential to understanding our main clause. Therefore, which has termites is, in this sentence, a non-restrictive relative clause.
And did you notice the commas? They're a big clue. The commas tell you that the information they set off is nonessential, often called parenthetical information. So restrictive relative clauses do not take commas but nonrestrictive relative clauses do.
Compare these two sentences:
The ceremony will honor the athletes, who won.
The ceremony will honor the athletes who won.
That little comma makes a world of difference. In the first sentence, all the athletes won. In the second sentence, we see that only some athletes won and they're the ones who will be honored. The difference hinges on just one comma because that comma signals whether the clause that follows is restrictive or nonrestrictive.
Most of us use relative clauses effectively every day without thinking about them. But full mastery of the art of sentence writing requires you to stop and take notice of the stunning power of restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.
Restrictive relative clauses are sometimes called essential relative clauses because they're essential to understanding which thing is being talked about. They're also sometimes called defining clauses because they define which thing is being talked about. Those are all just different ways of saying the same thing.
And here comes our controversy: The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style tell their followers that which is only for nonrestrictive clauses. So according to them it would be wrong to say Any house which I buy must be yellow. Many disagree, arguing that this is a standard and perfectly fine use of which. For your purposes, just think of AP's and Chicago's "rule" as a style recommendation that you can choose to follow—or not. But don't be surprised if an editor changes your whiches to thats.
Now, regarding the zero relative, compare these two sentences:
George got the job that you wanted.
George got the job you wanted.
This situation confounds a lot of writers. How do you know when to use that? If you're one of the writers who have puzzled over this, I have good news: it's up to you. Now that you know how to spot a relative clause, you can handle the news that relative pronouns are sometimes optional. When you leave them out, it's called the zero relative.
And remember, relative pronouns can do other jobs. That can, as we've seen, be a relative pronoun: The apple that is best for pies is the Granny Smith. But that can also be a pronoun: I like that. It can be an adjective: That guy is cool. It can be a subordinating conjunction: That John ate was a fact that would torment him for thirty minutes as he watched the other kids frolicking in the pool.
Especially important is the distinction between the relative pronoun that and the subordinating conjunction that. Remember: relative clauses are modifiers (just like adjectives) but subordinate clauses can be used as subjects and objects (just like nouns). To spot the difference, just determine whether the whole that clause is modifying a noun: The family that stays together. If so, it's a relative pronoun. If that is followed by a whole clause it's a subordinating conjunction: That you love me is all I need to know. Harry learned that life is not fair.
Like that, who can also do different jobs. In the man, who was driving, is tall, the who is a relative pronoun. But in Who was driving? it's not working to modify a noun. It's working as a personal pronoun.
You don't need to memorize every possible job these words can do. Just begin to notice their function in a sentence and how relative clauses function in well-written sentences.
If you're looking to distill all this stuff about relative clauses into a practical guideline to help your writing, consider this: Relative clauses seem to work best when they cast a little extra light on a thing or an idea. But they can quickly become a problem when they're used to insert history or backstory. They're at their worst when they contain an unstated "Oh, by the way" or "I never took the time to mention this before, so let me squeeze something in now."
Consider, too, that whenever you have more than one relative clause in a sentence, you might want to break the sentence up. Then again, like Caiman, you might not. Just know that you have the choice.