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Can the word "that" be used to refer to people?
Good writers, who presumably knew what they were doing, have been using that to refer to people for as long as the relative pronoun that has been in the language. It's been used by Caxton, Shakespeare, Service, Franklin, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage calls the notion that that may not refer to people "unfounded". Their conclusion: In current usage, that refers to persons or ...