Which is wicked. The little word can ensnare your
idea in a tangle of subordinate clauses:
Dracula's castle, which is surrounded by a craggy
landscape, is the scene of Harker's first encounter with horror, which
makes him doubt his own sanity.
Which forces you to put words beside one another
instead of making them move. Getting ride of it helps the sentence
illustrate, not just mention, its point:
Dracula's castle, surrounded by a craggy
landscape, is where Harker first encounters horror and comes to doubt
his own sanity.
Try to turn which-clauses into adjective-clauses:
The landscape, which is craggy and
inhospitable...
The craggy, inhospitable landscape...
Try to allow only one which per sentence, and
look critically at final clauses beginning with which. These clauses
often sound like afterthoughts:
Mina Harker is the real hero of Dracula
because she uses her mind more fully than the men do, which makes her
powerful and purposeful.
Mina Harker is the real hero of Dracula;
she uses her mind with more power and purpose than do the men.
You can use either which or that for relative
clauses modifying nouns in the sentence (who, whose, whoever, and
whichever also function this way):
The book which I left on the table...
The book that I left on the table...
But only which can introduce non-restrictive
clauses that function as asides or afterthoughts. That belongs to
restrictive clauses that help define or situate the noun:
The book, which I left on the table, scared Aunt
Nellie out of her wits.
The book that I left on the table was missing
when I looked for it.
Note an exception to the "one which per
sentence" rule in sentences with long parallel phrases. In such
sentences the commas reinforce the parallel structure:
Dracula works a kind of evil which originates in
a hunger for power, which ensnares people at their weakest point, and to
which his victims eventually give up their souls.
Of, like which,
can turn a sentence into a dizzy mess:
Evil is the betrayal of the condition of the love
of fellow humans.
By turning an abstract noun into a verb, the
writer gives more energy to the idea and allows room for further
development:
Evil betrays human love when it seeks its own
power.
Evil betrays human love because it replaces love
with power.
A good rule about it comes from
Sheridan Baker's The Practical Stylist: "Cut every it not
referring to something." Substitute a noun of it at the beginning
of a sentence:
It is hairy palms that repulse me.
The hairy palms repulse me.
After the party, the place looked like a wreck.
It really bothered me, so I started to clean it up.
After the party, the place looked like a wreck.
The mess really bothered me, so I started to clean it up. (The second it
refers to the mess.)
Sentence Fragments
Comma Splices
Run-on Sentences
Dangling or Misplaced Modifiers
Subject-Verb Agreement
Split Infinitives
Which, That, It, and Of
Semi-colons and Colons
Apostrophes
His and Her