It can get confusing, so much so that often you just chuck one in and hope it was the right choice.

And let’s let you in on a little secret: Usually you can get away with it (at least with non-copy-editor types). That’s because most other people are also a little shaky on the which vs. that concept…plus, nowadays, few people are real sticklers about it any more.

That vs. which — It can be tricky!

It makes sense. Initially that and which were used interchangeably.

Then, in the early 1900s, grammarians, most notably the Fowler brothers, decided there should be a rule about using them “correctly” and not interchangeably, and, well, that was that. (And which was which…)

The rule has now become so ingrained in modern usage that nitpickers and strict grammarians will seize on an errant that or which and think you don’t know how to write properly. (You do, of course. We’re sure of it.) Yes, even though it’s not a true crime against grammar, it’s often treated as one. 

That’s why, instead of just picking one and hoping you nailed it, it helps to know the traditional that vs. which rule that so many people still adhere to. So here goes …

When to use that and when to use which: A definitive guide

Let’s start with a super-truncated version of the rule espoused by the Fowlers and many other grammarians: That and which are both used to connect a clause to a sentence. If the clause is necessary to the sentence, you use that. If it’s not, you use which.

Now for a few more details: You use that and which to connect two different kinds of clauses — essential clauses (aka restrictive, defining, or integrated relative clauses) and nonessential clauses (aka, logically, non-restrictive, non-defining, or supplementary relative clauses). 

Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s what, clause-wise:

An essential clause is a clause that is, as you may have guessed, essential to the meaning of the sentence. It contains vital information about the subject of the sentence. And it’s literally an integral part of the sentence — that is, it isn’t set off by commas. Traditionally, when it’s an essential clause you use a that (or, if it’s a person, a who).

I need to get the car that is in the garage.

The clause “that is in the garage” is essential to the sentence because it tells us exactly which car I need to get. There can be other cars, but I need the specific one that’s in the garage.

A nonessential clause is, yes, not essential to the meaning of the sentence. It adds color material, information that adds texture or detail to the sentence but that isn’t ultimately necessary. It’s set off by commas and can be deleted from the sentence without having any impact on the meaning whatsoever. A nonessential clause gets a which.

I need to get the car, which is in the garage.

In this case, the clause “which is in the garage” is telling us a little more information about the car, but isn’t vital to understanding the sentence …the thrust of which is simply that I need to get the car. 

There are some exceptions to the that vs. which rule!

Needless to say, since it’s English we’re talking about, there are some caveats.

Caveat #1: If there’s already a “that” in the sentence, most writers will follow up with a “which” even if it’s opening an essential clause.

Take William Shakespeare. In Romeo and Juliet, he writes: “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This is much more euphonious than the clunky (but correct) “That that we call a rose…” And if it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for us. Even the grammarians who wrote the initial “here’s how to use which vs. that” thought there were times the rule could be bent.

Which leads us to caveat #2, a very important point: Nowadays most style guides, usage manuals, and dictionaries agree that, when it comes to that and which, the old rule isn’t the end all and be all anymore. They give us quite a bit of latitude, saying we can eschew the traditional “always use that with essential clauses.” Yes, some copy editors and sticklers might disagree, but they’re fighting a losing battle. The new general rule of thumb is simple, and makes life a bit easier: 

Use which when it’s a nonessential clause…but take your choice of that or which when it’s an essential one. It’s your call — whichever you think works best stylistically.

Yes, the (grammatically pure) times are a-changing. And now, that is that…which is to say, we’re done. 

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It probably shouldn’t be a big deal. After all, lie and lay are two very different words with two very different meanings. 

Lie means “to be in a horizontal or resting position on something (a bed or the ground) or to get into that position.” Lay means “to put something down.” 

Nice and simple, right? But even so, people fall into the lie vs. lay debate. 

And for good reason. It’s easy to get confused in spite of their different meanings.

Lie and lay sound similar, they look similar, their meanings are similar, and don’t get us started on the similarities between their different tenses. Take the past tense of lie which is…lay. (Look, at least the past tense of lay isn’t lie.) It’s enough to make you want to lay (or should it be lie?*) down your head and cry.

*It’s lay. Trust us. And you’ll see why if you keep reading.

Lay vs. lie — It’s confusing for (almost) everyone

Famous musicians do it (raise your hands, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton), as do major media outlets (we’re looking at you, U.S. News & World Report and the New York Post, to name just a few). 

So you’re definitely not alone if you get a little shaky when you’re debating whether it should be lie or lay, lay or laid (or layed?) or lied, not to mention lay down or lie down, and so on.

Often it’s a lay that’s put in when it should be a lie, as in the title of Bob Dylan’s song “Lay, Lady Lay.”  Bob might have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he definitely wouldn’t win a Nobel Prize for grammar if there were one. It should be “Lie, Lady, Lie.” No, it doesn’t sound nearly as good, and it might be seen as meaning Dylan wanted the lady to tell a falsehood instead of lying down with him in his big brass bed, but it would be correct. Same goes for Eric Clapton’s classic rock song, “Lay Down, Sally,” which correctly should be “Lie Down, Sally.” If Clapton told Sally, “Lay down my guitar,” he would have been right. But he should tell Sally to lie down, not lay down.

Then there are the cases where someone gets confused with the past tense of lie and puts in a lied —  which is the past tense of the other lie, the not-telling-the-truth one, but not of the reclining horizontally lie.

Protesters lied down in a “die-in” and then confronted Chambers during Monday’s meeting, where he sat between two empty chair

– U.S. News and World Report

Or they put in a laid … which is also wrong. 

Her mother Julia Eller said that after her daughter had jogged three or four miles on the trail, she laid down on a log to rest, and when she got up, was completely disoriented.

– New York Post

Speaking of being completely disoriented, you might feel like that at this point too, wondering why these examples are incorrect. Why can’t that lady lay across Dylan’s bed? And how is it that “lied down” is wrong … but “laid down” is wrong too? 

It’s because lie and lay are two different kinds of verbs: One of them, lie, is intransitive, and the other, lay, is transitive. This makes all the difference in their usage.

What’s the difference between an intransitive and a transitive verb?

It’s actually very simple. An intransitive verb doesn’t have an object. In other words, it doesn’t do anything to anyone or anything. It’s just an action. In the case of lie, you lie down. Period. Nice and simple…and correct. You can lie down on the bed, on the couch, on the ground, on whatever you want, but the act of lying is complete all by itself.

A transitive verb, on the other hand, does have an object connected to it, something or someone the verb is doing something to. If it doesn’t have an object, it doesn’t make sense. Take the verb “to hit”. You wouldn’t just say, “I hit.” You hit what? Whatever that “what” is is essential to its meaning. And that’s how it works with lay: you lay something down — your head, a book, whatever.  In the case of Eric Clapton’s Sally, if he was saying “lay down your head, Sally,” it would be fine. But just “lay down, Sally” doesn’t work.

Okay, so far so good…but it gets a bit more sticky when you look at the tenses. 

As we said before, in the past tense lie becomes lay, and lay becomes laid…which is also the past participle of lay. But the past participle of lie is lain. (As for layed, which we’ve also seen in different articles and posts — just forget about it. It’s an archaic spelling that is now considered incorrect, so don’t even think about writing about something being layed down, okay? Thank you.)

Lie vs. lay: A handy chart

To make life simpler, here’s a little chart:

And there you have it — an explanation of the often perplexing lay vs. lie aka laying vs. lying issue. We can now (euphemistically) lay down our pen (or, actually, keyboard) and rest our—

No, wait a second. There is one more thing, one more quirk to lie and lay. You know the old bedtime rhyme “Now I lay me down to sleep.” You might now be thinking it shouldn’t be lay in there, but lie. But actually that lay is absolutely correct because it’s used transitively, with an object — myself or me. That said, it could also be written intransitively as “Now I lie down to sleep.” 

Isn’t grammar fun? And that’s no lie. 

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The short and simple answer is yes, you can. 

Yet it seems that a lot of people don’t know this and think you can’t.

We’ve been asked this question numerous times by readers of our “word nerd” books and listeners of our NPR-affiliated podcast “You’re Saying It Wrong.” 

Maybe it’s because it was drummed into their heads as kids by well-meaning adults who thought “don’t start a sentence with ‘because’” was a rule (like so many other “grammar rules,” it isn’t), or maybe it’s because they’ve seen it used incorrectly (it often is). 

But for whatever reason, people often avoid starting a sentence with “because.” 

Can you start a sentence with because?

Because this happens so often, let’s cut to the chase.

Yes, you can absolutely start a sentence with “because.”

And…you caught that, didn’t you? Right there we started a sentence with “because,” and it’s completely correct.  

Why? Because it’s used at the opening of a subordinate clause that’s connected to a main clause and—

Wait a second! We just did it again, but in a different way! See, as you just read, there are actually two different but completely acceptable ways of starting a sentence with “because.” 

Starting a sentence with because: Two ways that work

The thing with “because” is that it’s a subordinate conjunction, which means it’s usually used to connect two clauses—a subordinate clause and a main clause. A subordinate clause is, yes, subordinate to the main one; it describes it. 

As such, it’s not a stand-alone sentence like the main clause is. When you start a sentence with “because,” you have to be sure that you use both clauses to make the sentence a complete one, like this: 

“Because I’m confused, I’m reading about starting sentences.”  

It’s a perfectly legal sentence. No grammar guru can complain about it. If you split it into two discrete units, however, that guru would get quite perturbed.

“Because I’m confused. I’m reading about starting sentences.”

This doesn’t work because the first clause isn’t a complete sentence on its own. It’s a sentence fragment. To be correct grammatically, it needs to be followed by the second clause, the main one. 

That’s the rule of thumb about starting a sentence with “because”—you need two parts to the sentence, two clauses connected by a comma, to make it work. 

Nice and simple, right? 

But this is English. And English has a way of bending the rules, so here we go…. 

Another way to start a sentence with because

There is another time when you can start a sentence with “because” and not follow that two-clause rule: if you’re using it conversationally to answer a spoken or unspoken “why” question. 

The perfect example of this is the time-honored kid-to-parent question: “Why can’t I stay out later?” “Because I said so” is a perfectly acceptable (albeit infuriating) answer.  

Persnickety nitpickers would argue that it’s not correct, that it’s a fragment that needs a rewrite. They’re right…technically. 

But most modern grammarians and writers disagree and feel it’s fine to use in more casual writing, when you’re trying to sound conversational, and, of course, when you’re writing dialogue. 

Pick up virtually any novel and you’ll see a lot of questions being answered with “Because I…” constructs. Clearly, this is one of those times when it’s good to break grammar rules.

And there you have it, two distinct and accepted ways of using “because” to start a sentence: either as the opener to a subordinate clause that presupposes the following clause, or as a conversational way of answering a “why” question. 

So, can you start a sentence with because? We hope it’s clear to you now!

Don’t listen if anyone tells you that you can’t start a sentence with “because.” Why not? Because we say so, of course. (And, no, you can’t stay out later. Not until you’ve finished writing.)

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