<p>The number of travelers WHICH REACHED the americas, by acident or design, WELL BEFORE Colombus IS enormous, if we are able TO BELIEVE every claim.</p>
<p>I know WHICH REACHED is wrong, but why? Is it had? Why is it had? Is it that? IDKKK :(w</p>
<p>I think it’s because “which” is wrong; it’s supposed to be “that.” I’m not sure what’s the name of the rule though.</p>
<p>I thought you could’t use ‘which’ on people (in this case travelers) - you must use who.</p>
<p>The numbers of travelers who reached…</p>
<p>eg. </p>
<p>“students who take the SAT” not “Students which take the sat”</p>
<p>“The machine which never broke” not “The machine who never stopped”</p>
<p>The rule is that “which” must be preceded by a comma, and “that” should not be preceded by a comma.</p>
<p>imo “Number” is the word in question not “travelers”</p>
<p>I agree with mousemat, the subject of the sentence is number, not travelers.</p>
<p>It’s the travelers WHO reached and it’s the number that IS enormous</p>
<p>yep, “which” needs to be surrounded by commas and reveal something non-essential to the meaning of the sentence. You use “which” for non-essential information (i.e. if you took the phrase out of the sentence, it would still mean the same thing), and you use “that” for essential information that is crucial to the sentence – or you can simply just remember which vs that by commas; which always goes with commas (as I stated).</p>
<p>Also just think about how awkward it sounds.</p>
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<p>Why is this so?</p>
<p>I mean the subject is clearly “number”, but the subject/verb agreement here is correct “number…is”.</p>
<p>Just because “number” is the subject, doesn’t mean that there is no error in the prepositional phrase “of travelers…”.</p>
<p>The error is clearly “Which” —> “who” because you can’t use “which” to refer to people.</p>
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<p>This is only the case when the “which” portion is non-essential information (meaning it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence when removed from the sentence). </p>
<p>In this case, the “which” is essential to the sentence, and therefore does not need a comma preceding it.</p>
<p>Some clarifications:
_ Words like which, who, when refers to what stands right before it. In this case “which” refers to “people”, which is wrong. Hence which —> who.
_ “which” need not be preceded by a comma, as Lipp7260 said. You can google defining relative clause and non-defining relative clause for more details.</p>