You Cannot Be Serious, # 38

Grammatical contradiction:

Link: The Guardian, ‘Police from several UK forces seek details of Charlie Hebdo readers’

The variation of relative pronouns here is nonsensical. Traditionally, who is used for human beings and that for inanimate objects. Although this distinction is not always maintained, the needs of clarity demand that there should be consistency in the usage chosen; but there isn’t here. Why is the customer’s humanity allowed, but not the newsagent’s? Perhaps the authors — there are two — meant to write newsagent’s, thus referring not to the person, but to the business, which would, of course, take that not who.

newsagent that, customer who