Post #3074864

@AnthoDerv One option for avoiding 'that that' is 'that this', but then you're likely to offend another group of people who aren't fans of 'this'. Deirdre McCloskey has a whole chapter in one of her books about writing inveighing against 'this'. I find it quite amusing. But I digress ... A more satisfying alternative to the McCloskeys of the world would be to use 'that the ____', where what goes in the blank should be obvious to you in context. It sounds to me like the person in question has overgeneralised a rule of thumb for avoiding imprecision and/or inelegance, though it could also be one of those cases of a sentence just sounding wrong. (Another of McCloskey's tips is to read a sentence aloud. Things that seem okay or only vaguely offensive in print can be revealed as wildly discordant when spoken aloud.)