Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 February 14

= February 14 =

What is the correct word? Which, who, or that?
I just ran across the following sentence in a Wikipedia article (Auction sniping): A bid sniper is a person, or software agent, which performs auction sniping. (emphasis added). Should the word in bold be "which" or should it be "who"? When referring to people. I assume we'd use the word "who". Right? But I am assuming that a "software agent" is some type of computer program, and not a human being per se. In which case, I can see using the word "which". But what would be proper in the given sentence, without actually rewording the sentence in its structure? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:48, 14 February 2016 (UTC)


 * "person or thing which" Googles 10x more common than "person or thing who"; matching the nearer antecedent is a natural default. OTOH "person (or thing) who" prefers the main antecedent to the parenthetical antecedent; whether commas are sufficiently parenthetical I don't know. Ignoring your ban on rewording, "person or thing that" is twice as common as "person or thing which". jnestorius(talk) 07:52, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
 * "That" is certainly acceptable, as "performs auction sniping" is (arguably) a restrictive clause. See English relative clauses for the gory details. Tevildo (talk) 11:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)


 * The grammatically correct way to resolve the who or which dilemma is to use both. A bid sniper is a person who, or software agent which, performs auction sniping. Slightly pedantic and fussy - but fully in accordance with grammatical rules. 81.131.178.47 (talk) 14:15, 15 February 2016 (UTC) (posted by SemanticMantis (talk) 15:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC))


 * Great solution. I would have never thought of that.  Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:27, 18 February 2016 (UTC)