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Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house—to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper! A yellow smell.

From "Yellow Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

I just wonder the above sentence is grammatically correct. Could it be re-written as "what it is like is" ? Or am I missing something here?

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The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper!

It's correct.

  1. The only thing I can think of, is the COLOR of the paper!

2 a. The only thing I can think of (that the smell is like) is the COLOR of the paper!

2 b. The only thing I can think of (that it is like) is the COLOR of the paper!

  1. The only thing I can think of, that it is like, is the COLOR of the paper!

  2. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper!

Does that help?

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