Relative pronoun question

Question

My teacher said that in a sentence beginning with "people ", we should always use "who" as the relatibe pronoun and "that" is not correct. For example, it should be "People who hate to exercise tend to gain weight more easily." ("who" can't be replaced by "that")
Is that true? Under what circumstances should we always use "who" or "that"?

Just the truth · Accepted Answer

Your teacher is wrong, wrong and did I mention wrong? Suffice it to say that we use   to be more personable, more polite. Since there are obviously times that personable is not required or even needed, you can safely use  at those times.

MrPedantic · Answer

Hello Guest

I'm assuming your question relates to contexts where 'who' is the subject of the relative clause.

1. If the relative pronoun after 'People' begins a non-defining relative clause, you should use 'who':

'People in Britain, who hate to exercise, tend to gain weight more quickly than people in Hong Kong.'

2. If the relative pronoun begins a defining relative clause, you will always be correct if you use 'who':

'People who hate exercise get fat.'

However, as Justthetruth suggests, native speakers often use 'that' in defining relative clauses – especially where the sense of 'people-ness' is rather faint:

'People that have changed the course of history.'
'People that shoot people ought to be shot themselves.'

Also where 'people' is preceded by a quantifier:

'Some people that like Mozart like Beethoven too.'
'All people that on earth do dwell.' (An old hymn.)

MrP

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