A Word, Please: The word that is helpful and dispensable

“I have been told by some of my more educated friends that using the word “that” (see, I did it again) is many times unnecessary,” Randy wrote. “I was hoping you would weigh in on the technical side of when and when not to use that.”

“That” is a very complicated subject. Yet Randy managed to turn it into a question that’s very easy to answer: When should you omit “that”?

In grammar, “should” questions are often easily answered with: whenever you want.

And, no, that’s not grammar anarchy. It’s a testament to how even people who know nothing about grammar know how to use good grammar.

Case in point: Randy left “that” in this passage: “I have been told by some of my more educated friends that using the word ...”

Why do you suppose he kept it? Was it because he has an expert understanding of subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns? Or do you suppose instead that he simply knew that without “that” his sentence would be a mess?

He didn’t need grammar explanations to make that choice. Just simple logic.

Now look at Randy’s comment, “I was hoping you would weigh in.” He could have placed “that” before “you” or not. Either way, the sentence is fine.

So when, exactly, is “that” dispensable? To understand the answer, you need to know that “that” functions as several different parts of speech.

“That” can be a plain-old pronoun: “That is nice.” It can be an adjective modifying a noun: “He liked that movie.” It can be a conjunction: “That you love me is all I need to know.” And it can be a relative pronoun: “I know that you’re in there.”

In two of these jobs, “that” can’t be discarded. But as a relative pronoun or a conjunction, “that” can sometimes be chopped out without hurting the message one bit.

The relative pronouns are that, which and who/whom. Their job is to introduce a clause that “postmodifies” a noun. That is, it comes after a noun and adds description to it, just as an adjective does. “The car that he was driving.” “The family that prays together.” “The thing that I learned.”

In each of these cases “that” heads up a clause, complete with verb. The whole clause then points back at a noun — like car, family or thing — modifying it.

Sometimes the relative pronoun is followed by a noun or another pronoun, like “he” in “the car that he was driving.” Other times, the relative pronoun can be the subject of the verb, with no other noun needed: “the family that prays together.”

Whenever there’s another noun or pronoun hanging around, you can often leave the relative pronoun out: “The car he was driving” says the same thing as “the car that he was driving,” just more efficiently. There’s even a term for dropping the relative pronoun. It’s called the “zero relative.”

As a conjunction, the word “that” can allow what was once an independent clause — a simple sentence — to work as a noun, either as a subject or an object. Take the clause “You love me,” put a “that” on front, and suddenly you have a noun phrase that can act as a subject in “That you love me is all I need to know.” That same noun phrase can also act as an object, for example of the verb “know” in “I know that you love me.”

As you can see, when a “that” clause is an object, sometimes you don’t need “that” at all.

Anyone who likes efficient, less-wordy writing can appreciate the advice that you should omit every unnecessary “that.” And the trick for choosing which “that” to whack isn’t a trick at all. Just use your judgment.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.