Hello everyone,

I'm often unsure if I should use "that" or "it" to refer back to a statement or a situation mentioned before.Both "that" and "it" are commonly used in such cases and I haven't found any useful direction as to how to avoid making this mistake.Here are some examples I've found on the net and in Quirk's grammar:

1.My child has been permanently excluded and I don't agree with that/it.

2.People say that teenagers don't read anymore but to be honest I don't agree with that/it.

3.They will probably win the match.That/it will please my mother.

4.Replacing "it" with "that" and vice versa in the examples above would be equally acceptable option to me but I'm not sure about that/it.

Thank you for the help

There are two additional possibilities that may apply in some cases: 'this', and nothing at all, e.g.

"People say that teenagers don't read any more, but to be honest I don't agree with that/it."

Does it mean that both it and that work in the sentences above Erik?
(except for the one you corrected in your post where neither is acceptable).

1. My child has been permanently excluded and I don't agree with that/it.
I think that I would use a comma after ‘excluded’ followed by ‘but’, and finish with either nothing at all or ‘it’.
My child has been permanently excluded, but I don't agree.
My child has been permanently excluded, but I don't agree with it.

2. People say that teenagers don't read anymore but to be honest I don't agree with that/it.
Being British I would write ‘any more’. Again a comma. As for that/it, I feel that there is a subtle difference. ‘I don’t agree with that’ means that I don’t agree with the offered fact, whereas ‘I don’t agree with it’ suggests that it is the statement that causes disagreement

3.They will probably win the match. That/it will please my mother.
‘That will please my mother’ suggests being emphatic ‘THAT WILL please my mother’

I have noticed that you do not always leave a space after a punctuation mark. Is that an idiosyncrasy of the languages you normally write in, or is it because my hopeless typing is infecting my friends across the ether?

Thanks for the help BobinWales.



I guess that in my case it can be called simply illiteracy Bob :).I'm not an expert for my native tongue and punctuation has never been something I bothered with too much.I have too much to achieve in my learning English before becoming pedantic about comas a little more left or right than they are supposed to be :) I've learned to capitalize English since it was a question of life or death for russcable and I had to save my friend's life:)
I'm joking of course.I think that my punctuation is within the limits of what is an etiquete and which is acceptable and readable without causing anyone headache.

I'd like to add here the answers to the questions from a test that made me open this topic in the first place:

1. Why don't we add drinks holders?

In the possible answers "That sounds good" is the correct answer and "It sounds good" is incorrect

2.How about making the steering wheel adjustable?

The answer given as correct is "I think that'll work" and "I think that it'll work" is incorrect

3.We could add an mp3 player to the executive model

The correct answer is "I'm not sure about that" and again "I'm not sure about it" is incorrect

In any of those sentences "it" sounded good to me.In the first sentence "it" would be adequate replacement to i.e "adding drinks holders" : "Adding drinks holders sounds good" .In the other two sentences it is equally possible to recover similar statement which is replaced by more succint "it"

I'd like to hear comments on my reasoning here and the answers from the test I gave.Thanks for the help

For me, it's a little unclear what "it" is. In the first sentence "it" could be the car that you are adding the drink holders to that sounds good. It could be the drink holders themselves that sound good. "That" clears it up.
"That (improvement or idea you just suggested) sounds good."

I agree with Bob on the inferred emphasis that "that" gives.

Somehow I feel that using "it" refers to the concept "and "that" refers more to the specific.

For example: Mark K has been sentenced to death.
if you say "I don't agree with it" I would tend to infer that you are disagreeing with the concept of the death penalty
whereas if you say "I don't agree with that" I would assume you are making a comment on the specific case.

We are going to have a charity on five aside football match.
- I don't agree with that - it is a bad idea
- I don't agree with it - I don't agree with 5 aside football. Football teams have 11 players.

Thank you for the answers trolley and tony.
From what you said I gather that you would rarely if ever use "it" to refer back to a whole message carried by a sentence or paragraph in some previous conversation.Your suggestion about "it" used in such situations to refer to concepts rather than to details of the situation is really interesting and gives me an idea how to think of it tony.

I'd like to ask about another situation which came to mind in the meantime.For example,a friend is asking me for advice on some situation he's just explained to me in details.After he's finished,I'm answering,finding the whole situation complicated and not knowing what advice I could give:

"I don't know what to think of it"

or it would be "that" again?

I'd go with "that", again.
"I don't now what to think of that (thing you just told me)."

Thanks for the answer again trolley.

It depends on what it was that you were told but as you say it was "long and complicated" I would go for "it".

... and probably: I don't know what to make of it