Contact Clauses — Omitting the Relative Pronoun in Technical English
5 exercises — practise omitting the relative pronoun in object relative clauses in technical writing.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly omits the relative pronoun because it would be the object of the clause in a bug report?
"The bug we found yesterday only reproduces..." is correct: "that" would be the object of "found" ("we found that"), so it can be freely omitted, forming a contact clause. Option B drops "we" as well, leaving an ungrammatical reduced clause. Option C inserts "is" incorrectly. Option D keeps "that" but mismatches it as a subject, which produces a different, incorrect meaning.
2 / 5
Choose the sentence that correctly keeps the relative pronoun because omitting it would be ungrammatical, since it functions as the subject.
"The engineer who fixed the memory leak also updated the documentation" is correct: "who" is the subject of "fixed", and subject relative pronouns in restrictive clauses cannot be omitted in standard written English. Option B omits the required subject pronoun, producing a run-on, ungrammatical sentence. Option C incorrectly uses commas instead of a relative pronoun. Option D wrongly substitutes the object form "whom" for a subject role.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly forms a contact clause in a code review comment, omitting "that" before an object relative clause?
"This is the exact edge case the reviewer flagged last week" is correct: "that" ("the reviewer flagged that") is the omitted object, and dropping it is standard, natural English. Option B reorders the words incorrectly, breaking the clause. Option C inserts an unnecessary "is". Option D uses "who", which is reserved for people, not for "edge case".
4 / 5
Select the sentence that correctly omits "which" in an object relative clause describing a configuration file, keeping the sentence natural in technical writing.
"The config file the deployment script reads has moved to a new path" is correct: "which" ("the deployment script reads which") is the omitted object of "reads", and the contact clause reads naturally. Option B reverses subject and object, changing the meaning to say the file itself reads the script. Option C keeps "which" but adds a redundant resumptive pronoun "it", which is ungrammatical. Option D scrambles the word order entirely.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly forms a contact clause with a stranded preposition, omitting the object relative pronoun in a dependency-tracking note?
"The dependency the module relies on is no longer maintained" is correct: even with the stranded preposition "on", the object relative pronoun "that" can still be freely omitted, producing a natural contact clause. Option B drops the preposition "on" entirely, breaking the meaning of "relies on". Option C wrongly uses "who", reserved for people, not for "dependency". Option D scrambles the preposition's position, producing an ungrammatical sentence.