People are who

I know you all think I'm this crazy comma nazi who runs around screaming at the world's comma abusers. Wrong. I usually giggle to myself in silence. Anyway, there is something that bothers me far more than comma misuse. It's a very simple rule that I know I've talked about before.


People are who
Things are that

Get it? Not hard. If you're talking about a person, they're a who, not a that. If you find yourself writing something like, "She's the one that..." stop. No. She isn't. She's the one who did whatever you're talking about. People are who.

This is one of those ones where I don't care if you do it in conversational speech. That's fine. I probably do it too. However, in professional writing, there is no excuse for getting this wrong. This is a mistake that pisses me off more than anything because I'm a person who notices incompetency. Do you see how I did that there? Mistake is a that. I am a who.

And a person's a person, no matter how small.