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Sure, just like everybody else I felt stupid that I’ve never really understood the difference between “that” and “which,” but I didn’t let this shame stop me from confessing my ignorance repeatedly to colleagues until eventually one told me to look it up. And this shame didn’t stop me from calling that same old friend a year later and announcing, in a panic, “I’ve got a copy-editing test tomorrow and I looked up ‘that versus which’ and I still need help.” That final humiliation seems to have done the trick, because by the end of the night I got it. By the next day I actually passed this portion of the copy-editing test. And now that I finally get it, I can see where a major source of my confusion came from: merry old England.

• Excerpt: Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies – A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite