What or Which: Which Would We Use or What Would We Use?

What or Which: Which Would We Use or What Would We Use?

If you don’t know the answer to this question already then perhaps a quick view of this article will help you.  Even though ‘what’ is used commonly for questions like ‘what month is your birthday on?’ it is incorrect, but keep in mind that how native speakers of English speak and the rules of grammar are quite different.

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What is used when there are a large number of choices. When there is a smaller amount of choices and all choices are known to the speakers we usually are asking for a choice and we would use ‘which’.

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When we are asking a question which will identify something, we use ‘what’. What kind of ….do you own?

When you ask a person to select something use ‘which’, which color pens do you like, red or green?

When asking a person a question to quiz their knowledge we usually use ‘what’ even if there are only a couple choices. What is the quickest way home, this way or that way?

When asking for them to select a personal preference we use ‘which’. Which way do you want to go home, this way or that way?

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In a nutshell, ‘which’ is used to select and ‘what’ is used to identify.

What or which: which would we use or what would we use? Because we are testing your knowledge, we would use the latter. What would we use?