submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Zagaroth@beehaw.org to c/writing@beehaw.org

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So, Grammarly is correcting me a lot on a phrase I tend to use, and I don't entirely understand the difference.

On a sentence that expands upon a previous sentence in dialog, I tend to have a character say "Which means [...]"

Grammarly wants to fix this to be "This means [...]"

It's become clear to me that I tend to use 'which' instead of 'this' when speaking, but I am not sure why one is preferred use over the other.

Can anyone offer me some insight? I already tried googling "which vs this", but I got results for "which vs that" instead, which is an entirely different use case.

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[-] Pies@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Your options are

I'm hungry, which means I should eat.

I'm hungry. That means I should eat.

If you're getting pinged for using "which" wrong, it's probably because you are using a period before "which" instead of a comma, which I've shown above.

[-] Dungeondaddyd20@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This means that when "which" introduces a subordinate clause it is treated as a conjunction, which means it can't begin a sentence.

[-] Zagaroth@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

You are correct. However, I'm also doing it as part of dialog, so how a character speaks will be a factor going forward.

I think I am going to split this, characters with a more formal speaking style are going to 'this' and more casual characters are going to use 'which'.

this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023

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