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In this sentence, is there an error?

In the name of revamping the law, investigation and trial should not be altered in a way which undermines the principles on which the judicial system was founded.

My book says that 'which' should be replaced by 'that. If yes, why is that?

Kate Gregory
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Shashwat Choudhary
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1 Answers1

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First of all you have 'which' used twice, so maybe your book is telling you that you need to replace one of them with 'that' so as to avoid repetition.

...investigation and trial should not be altered in a way that undermines the principles on which the judicial system was founded.

The second 'which' cannot be replaced by 'that', one cannot say 'the principles on that something was founded.

Other than the problem of repetition, I do not see why your original sentence should not be correct.

fev
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    Native Anglophones wouldn't normally even notice (let alone care) about the word "which" being used twice in one sentence - particularly when it's fulfilling different syntactic roles. – FumbleFingers Dec 05 '20 at 12:58
  • I am not a native Anglophone, you got that right. So maybe my exaggerated care of being correct could be understood. However, I work a great deal with written texts in other languages as well, and in all cases it seems to me that it is better to avoid repetitions, sometimes even phonetic ones, unless it is a voluntary one to emphasise something. If you say it doesn't matter as a native speaker, that teaches me something so thank you – fev Dec 05 '20 at 13:04
  • I'd go along with what you say. The OP's example with two fairly close occurrences of "which" is stylistically inelegant. – BillJ Dec 05 '20 at 13:38
  • @BillJ: Everyone's entitled to their own stylistic preferences. I didn't find *undermining* but it was no problem to find at least three different written instances of the sequence *which embodies the principles on which...* in Google Books. And personally I wouldn't have noticed that repetition if we weren't so focused on it here. – FumbleFingers Dec 05 '20 at 15:46
  • @FumbleFingers I am glad you say that everyone is entitled, because I am beginning to feel a certain aggressiveness on this site... – fev Dec 05 '20 at 15:48
  • I apologise if the tone of my comments seems harsh. But this question is clearly a duplicate of a very popular question asked here over 10 years ago. That was before English Language Learners was set up, and if it wasn't such an obvious duplicate I'd have voted to migrate to ELL instead. I will admit I'm surprised a competent native Anglophone like BillJ thinks the repetition is "inelegant", but my experience on ELL is that it's almost always learners who notice and/or don't like trivial repetitions of "function words" such as prepositions, not natives. – FumbleFingers Dec 05 '20 at 16:12
  • @BillJ: I do thank you for your support, not necessarily because you agreed with me, but because your lack of harshness convinced me to stay on this site. – fev Dec 05 '20 at 16:18
  • I must say that for a non-native speaker, your English is exceptionally good. Certainly nothing that you've written here gives me the slightest clue that you might not be a native Anglophone. But I would urge you to have a look at ELL. Because you probably had to go through the formal process of learning English (whereas we natives mostly just "pick it up" informally), it's quite likely you understand and can explain certain aspects of English better than I or most of my compatriots! That's to say - you could be a real asset to ELL. – FumbleFingers Dec 05 '20 at 16:30
  • @FumbleFingers: Ok, will give it a go. However, I must say that I work with translations into English from other languages for publication, and this is the reason why my goal is to sound native English. I want the reader to forget it is a translation. For this reason, I am really keen to have contact with native speakers. PS: It is my belief that neither being a native speaker nor being a non-native speaker can give anyone grounds to be arrogant or dismissive. We are learning together. I can tell you that I learnt tremendously about my own language when I tried to teach it to a native English! – fev Dec 05 '20 at 16:38
  • Indeed. I'm often surprised at what I learn about English by being active on ELL. But I can't deny that sometimes I am arrogant / dismissive, so another thing I've learned is that it's not always easy to change one's behaviour. Almost every day when I come to ELU/ELL, I tell myself I should make more effort to *be nice*. (But I'm afraid that almost every day I fail to live up to that ideal! :) – FumbleFingers Dec 05 '20 at 16:50
  • Well now..., one absolutely necessary component of being nice, is to admit one's shortcomings. So, as the French say, chapeau! – fev Dec 05 '20 at 16:55