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When I want to emphasize a result or aim, I use a phrase with 'so that'. Other authors use 'such that'. I wonder if there are any rules or if both can be used interchangeably.

For example

Experts from different backgrounds are invited so that diverse opinions can be heard.

vs.

Experts from different backgrounds are invited such that diverse opinions can be heard.

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  • Hmm. The search engine is strange. I searched for "so that such that" and this did not come up. It also did not come up during composition of my question. Thanks for the link.
    – Thomas
    Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 20:10
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    I was only aware of it because it got me a lot of upvotes back when. :-) Searching is tougher on this site because many of the words we really want to search for are the "fluff" words that the engine automatically filters out.
    – Hellion
    Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 20:21

2 Answers 2

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So that, as in your first example, means ‘in order that’. Such that means ‘of a kind’, as in ‘The experts we invited were such that diverse opinions could be heard.’

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  • In this context does either sentence sound wrong?
    – dcaswell
    Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 14:59
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    The first sentence is fine. The second is at best unclear, and at worst ungrammatical.
    – Barrie England
    Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 15:00
  • What about in a sentence like "The service can also be configured such that calls to GetPost that have a batch User-Agent will skip the cache."? Are both 'so that' and 'such that' valid? Or does it really depend on what's trying to be conveyed?
    – Noel Yap
    Commented Mar 3, 2017 at 23:26
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I agree with @BarrieEngland. You could re-cast your second sentence in another way, and still keep the "such that."

The sheer number of experts responding to the invitation was such that we had difficulty in scheduling them all to air their diverse opinions.

(Or some variation on the theme.) In this case, the "such that" means, as Barrie points out, "of a kind."

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