Relative Clauses: 5 things (which) you didn’t know about Steve Jobs

Everyone knows that Steve Jobs died last week. But what do you really know about him? All I knew was that he was the spokesman and the CEO of Apple, one of the biggest and well-known companies in the world. So to get to know the man after he has just died may seem a little pointless, but he did have and lead a very interesting life. So here are 5 facts that you may or may not have known about him:

1. He was half-Syrian and adopted. His biological parents met at university; his mother was American and his father, who he never met, was Syrian. A working-class Californian couple adopted him shortly after he was born.
2. He dropped out of college and was a Buddhist. He studied for one semester but gave it up to travel around India where he became a Buddhist.
3. He used to be the CEO of Pixar, the animation company. He bought the Toy Story animation company for $10million in 1986, which Disney would later buy for over $7billion.
4. He left and returned to Apple. Even though he set up Apple with Steve Wozniak, whom he met in 1970 through a mutual friend, he was fired because of low sales in 1985. His next company was taken over by Apple in 1996 that brought his return.
5. He was a pescetarian whose diet included fish and vegetables but no meat.

There are other interesting things about him, such as his personal wealth being over $8billion, but I think everyone already knew that he was incredibly rich. Additionally, his return to Apple pushed through the iMac and in particular, the iPod, that helped the company become this worldwide brand. It is sad that he’s gone, because he had helped create so many technological gadgets (which) most of us have today. Even if you never use an Apple product, you know the logo and the name. So even though he may be dead, his influence will always live on.

Relative Clauses

Defining relative clause

• To give important information about a person, place or thing use a relative clause (relative pronoun + subject + verb)
• Use the relative pronouns who for people, which for things, and where for places. Use whose to mean ‘of which / of who’.
• You can use that instead of who or which.
• Who, which and that can be omitted when the verbs in the main clause and the relative clause have a different subject.

Non-Defining relative clauses

• If a relative clause gives extra, non-essential information (you can understand the sentence without it), you must put it between commas, or a comma and a full stop.
• You can’t leave out the relative pronoun
• You can’t use that instead of who / which