Grammar girl here, today we're going to talk about a grammar myth that you can never use the word that to refer to people.

And then we'll get to the burning questions of whether your dog is an it or a she,

and whether you can talk about a table whose legs are scratched.

First, let's talk about who versus that.

Many people have been taught that you should never use the pronoun that to refer to a person.

That sentences such as girls that have long hair by more scrunchies is wrong,

and that it should be girls who have long hair by more scrunchies.

I was taught that rule, but it turns out it's a myth.

It's not wrong to use who, but it's also not wrong to use that.

I checked a bunch of major style guides.

Garner's Modern American Usage, the Chicago Manual of Style,

Feller's Modern English Usage, and the Marion Webster Dictionary of English Usage

all say that although it's always fine to use who, it's also fine to use that.

For example, it's fine to write something like girls that have long hair by more scrunchies.

It's been done for a very long time, and the objection to it is more recent.

Chaucer and Shakespeare, for example, used that to refer to people.

And Marion Webster notes that usage writers only started objecting to it in the early 1900s.

I actually crafted that particular scrunchie sentence to highlight the instance where Feller said using that is most common.

When you're writing about someone who represents a class rather than an individual person.

In that sentence, girls that have long hair by more scrunchies,

we're talking about girls with long hair in general, not one specific girl.

That's a little bit different from a sentence like,

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