ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the nonessential clause...which is having

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trouble getting over its inferiority complex.

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Check out the following passage...

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How would you correct the below underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

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The outermost layer, that is typically smooth with a greenish color, is called the exocarp.

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And here are the potential answers:

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Huh... we never imagined we'd know so many details about the secret lives of coconuts...

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Anyway, let's see what we can do to help this sentence get on track...

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Choice (B) probably gets the award for the worst possible choice.

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Even if we don't know anything about... anything, it just sounds bad when we read

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it out loud: "The outermost layer, it is typically smooth with a greenish color, is

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called the exocarp."

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Sounds awkward, right? This is because there's no need to put in the pronoun "it" to

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stand for the noun "layer."

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Placing "it" in this position mutates the sentence into some kind of mangled run-on.

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We're actually in need of another type of pronoun entirely.

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(D) is closer...it attempts to use the word "what" as a relative pronoun.

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Relative pronouns introduce relative clauses, which are a type of clause that modify a word,

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phrase, or idea in the main clause.

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For example, the relative clause here is obsessed with telling us how smooth and green the outermost

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layer of the coconut is.

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Even though we are indeed on the hunt for a relative pronoun, we can't give "what"

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the OK, since it's rarely used that way.

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Choice (A) isn't too far off the mark. "That" can indeed be employed as a relative pronoun.

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However, when "that" is used to introduce a relative clause, it signals that the clause

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is essential to the meaning of the sentence.

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Let's read the sentence without the relative clause and see if we lose anything essential:

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"The outermost layer is called the exocarp."

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Not so much. Sure, we lose some detail about what the exocarp looks like, but that's

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not the main point of this sentence. Those kinds of details are only icing on the cake.

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Another big hint that this relative clause is nonessential is that commas surround it.

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When something is surrounded by commas in a sentence, it's usually an indication that

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it's nonessential.

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Therefore, we should never put commas before "that" when it's acting as a relative pronoun.

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At long last, we've landed on the right answer: choice (C).

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"Which" is the relative pronoun we need because it's used to introduce nonessential

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clauses, which makes it A-OK. with being separated from a sentence by commas.

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Random fact: Non-essential Clauses perform small jobs, such as polishing toy trains,

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in the days leading up to Christmas.

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