English · Chapter 9 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer

Relative clauses

How to add information about a noun with who, which, that, whose, where and when - and when the commas go in and when they stay out.

The short version

Commas change what the sentence means

A defining clause tells you which one and takes no commas. A non-defining clause only adds extra detail you could delete, and it needs commas on both sides. The difference is real: the passengers who were injured went to hospital means only the injured ones, while commas would mean all of them.

My brother, who lives in Leeds, is a nurse.

You already know which brother, so the clause is a bonus fact and takes commas.

Drop the pronoun when a new subject follows

In a defining clause you can leave out who, which or that when it is the object, which means when another subject comes straight after it. You cannot drop it when it is the subject, because nothing would be left to do the action. Look at the word right after the pronoun: a verb means it must stay.

The book I read was good.

A new subject, I, follows, so the pronoun is optional; the man who called cannot lose its who.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Lesson 8 of 23 in this chapter

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