Who, Which, or That for a Team?

Dear Mr. S___:

You wrote:

>>Can I say “… interdisciplinary teams, who work together with customers …”
>>or should it be “… interdisciplinary teams, which work together with customers …”?

Either is acceptable. In modern usage, “who” normally applies to people and “which” to things, with “that” working for either. However, in this case it does depend on your emphasis.

If you want to emphasize that the teams are made up of individual people, then you would probably want to use “who.” If you are emphasizing the function of the team rather than the makeup (or if, for example, the team were a team of horses…), then “which” would be fine.

You might do better using “who” because it would be less likely to cause offense to someone. I have seen all three–who, which, and that–used in the sports pages to describe teams.

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