attention grammarians!

[nolly]

"This index will show you the number and percent of students that selected specific answer options."

OR

"This index will show you the number and percent of students who selected specific answer options."

OR

something else?

Comments

[redbird]

You can get away with either--there's long precedent in English for using "that" to refer to humans. (One of E. B. White's New Yorker columns used the King James Bible as an example of this.)

That said, I like "who have selected" and I'd suggest changing "answer options" to "answers" unless it's clearly about ways of answering--say, X percent answered in English, Y percent in Spanish, Z percent in Quechua, and Q percent by drawing pictures.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

It's about a detailed breakdown of responses for a multiple choice test. The first wording is what's in the spec, but it doesn't read well to me, so I'm considering proposing alternative wording. However, I tend to avoid "that" in favor of "which" or "who" in general, so I wasn't sure if this was a real lack in the sentence or my personal quirk.

[redbird]

"That" or "who" is fine; "which" goes with an inanimate subject, so you'd be forcing the emphasis onto "number or percent" rather than "students", which may be what you want.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

Except that the number or percent didn't do the selecting --- the students did, no?

[nolly.livejournal.com]

*nod* I wasn't considering "which" in this specific case; it's merely a general tendency. In fact, I think there may have been an a.p thread on it a couple of years ago, but I should be working, not googling old threads.