In a recent post, “Kill these words! 10 easy rules to enliven your writing,” I included the word ‘that’ as a weak word to be eliminated from sentences. ‘That’, used as a relative pronoun or conjunction in a sentence, is a particular pet peeve of mine, eliciting a fingernails-on-chalkboard type response whenever I encounter it. Yet its egregious usage seems to be multiplying, in novels, blog posts, even news articles, used by novice and experienced writers alike. When did ‘that’ attain such ub...