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"which" vs "this" (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Which" to me indicates options exist to enumerate, but several aren't mentioned, whereas 'This' is to expressly define something previously mentioned. I believe this to be the case that Grammarly is applying.

However, from a usage perspective, I feel the usage of 'which' or 'this' (along with ''that') frequently add no information to a sentence, and is best to be removed unless your text is trying to be conversational (where words are added for courtesy or to help with fluency).