What vs which when referring to people.

[AnnieLobeseder]

Please, kind pedants, help me out with this one.

"...wondering what celebrity lived there."

Should be:

"...wondering, which celebrity lived there," not so?

Does this help you?

I would say that the answer is it should be "What celebrity..." if there are limitless options on who it might be; but if you had a list of slebs to choose from then it should be "Which sleb..."

That is helpful, yes. But I thought that it was kinda rude to refer to people as 'what'.

Thumbwitch is correct...what=limitless choice, which=limited choice.
I'd use which in this case, as celebrities as a "set" is a limited group.

Thanks ladies. I'm going to leave it as 'what', cos I'm proofreading and the rule of thumb is to leave well enough alone if it isn't actually incorrect.

Can I run another one by you please?

...her admission of being a failure.
or
...her admission to being a failure.

one admits to being a failure; admission of anything is to allow it into somewhere. Except admission of guilt, I suppose. Well, no, even then admission of guilt is allowing guilt to enter into your mind/being, so I stick by my first point.

But it isn't a good way to say it - it would be better to say "she admits to being a failure", or "her admission that she is/was a failure".

I think I'd say "her admission of failure" and be done with it!

Thanks ladies. Deadline was last night so replies were sadly too late, but I left it as 'admission of being' cos I found lots of examples of that being used on Google. A frightening way to get the 'right' answer on a paying job, I know!