Indeed. Again from the above-cited reference:chris ivey wrote:right mike. 'in current usage' being the key problem here. the language is constantly changing to accommodate the ignorant bastards who ignorantly bastardize such.
"That is our most general relative pronoun, as well as our oldest. It was regularly used to refer to persons as well as to things in earlier literature:
"When that came back into literary use around the beginning of the 18th century after falling out of favor during the 17th, it was noticed with some disapproval...by such writers as...Ah, great God that art so good--Noah's Flood, prob. written before 1425, in Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. A.C. Cawley, 1959 (spelling modernized)
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me--Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1601
...............
"It may be that some carryover from the 18th-century general dislike of that has produced the apparently common, yet unfounded, notion that that may be used to refer only to things...That has applied to persons since its 18th-century revival just as it did before its 17th-century eclipse."
Toby Keith and Shakespeare in the same thread!
Forsooth, my liege, if but a woman quaff
a frothy brew with gusto like my own,
in such a saucy wench shall I delight!
But if you want to invade the Grand Ole Opry with yer Strunk'n Whatt and Chicago Manual of Style, knock yo-sef out. You can start, ummm; umm. With the spelling of "Old" and "Opera"....?