Читать книгу Bad Advice - John E. McIntyre - Страница 13

Always delete that.

There is weird hostility out there to an innocuous relative pronoun.

You can safely delete that when two short clauses are joined: “She said she was sick.” No one will misunderstand or object.

But some editors and teachers go too far and delete the thats wholesale. Even the Associated Press Stylebook indicates a number of cases in which the relative pronoun is necessary:

Item: When a time element intervenes between the verb and the dependent clause: “She said Sunday that she was sick.”

Item: When certain verbs are used: advocate, asset, contend, declare, estimate, make clear, point out, propose, and state.

Item: When the subordinate clause begins with after, although, because, before, in addition to, until, and while. “She said that after she ate the oysters she was sick.”

Moreover, if you have two subordinate clauses, the second of which is introduced by that, you will do the reader and the cause of parallelism a favor by including the first one as well: “She said that she was sick and that she planned to see her doctor in the morning.”

When that is there and does no harm, take your hands off the keyboard.