Is this an unnecessary "that"?? I'm confused whether or not to add a "that" in specific sentences

Question

"The universally recognized raw text format that any computer can understand." OR

"The universally recognized raw text format any computer can understand.

This is a definition for a computer science term and online, the definition includes "that". Is "that" in the first sentence redundant? I understand that in some cases "that" is necessary, like "The fish that leaped into the sea" because you're naming what the specific fish did--you're identifying it, but I encounter a lot of sentences that I think "that" is unnecessary in. ANOTHER EXAMPLE:

"The time it takes for a bit to travel." OR

"The time that it takes for a bit to travel." In my opinion, you don't need "that" because time is already the subject and you're not naming specifically what "time" is or what it did, unlike the fish sentence. Please help!!

From the answer to that question, English only allows you to omit that* when it has been moved from a non-subject position in the embedded clause, and when it's followed by the subject of the embedded clause.* But I wouldn't want to stake my life on whether or not there might be specific contexts where even if those preconditions are met, it's still not valid (or idiomatically natural) to discard the word *that*. — FumbleFingers, Dec 11 '19 at 17:40
Precisely because your audience for "raw text format" is likely to have English as a second or third language, the word 'that' helps the reader separate the two parts. When spoken, the two parts may even sound different - emphasizing 'any' provides the break. — Yosef Baskin, Dec 11 '19 at 20:50

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 12 '19 at 05:26

It's not necessary, but it's helpful. I suspect that it's more common in long sentences with complex embedded clauses, because it makes it easier to tell how the clauses relate to each other. On the other hand, short sentences are relatively easy to parse, and redundancy adds significantly to the length.

This explains why it's used in your first example, but would usually be omitted in the second.

Is this an unnecessary "that"?? I'm confused whether or not to add a "that" in specific sentences

1 Answers1