A 'that' versus 'which' question.

[Tom Wood]

Here are the sentences in question:

"The tops of the super high-rises of downtown scrape the clouds. The tallest of all is FEAR Tower. Bright red, it is capped by a hologram of flaming red letters that spells its name."

I'm told it should be "a hologram of flaming red letters which spells its name."

I've studied the Grammar Girl examples, and it seems to me that the sentence needs 'that' because it loses its meaning if "spells its name" is deleted.

ETA: Crowdsourced: https://twitter.com/agentsofdisrupt/status/1127343082846982144

[Maggie Ann]

Bright red, it is capped by a hologram of flaming red letters, spelling its name.

[LilyBLily]

"that" is correct. "which" would not be correct.

Imagine "which" is always after a comma and you're covering most cases.

[Tom Wood]

Bright red, it is capped by a hologram of flaming red letters, spelling its name.

The present participle is another can of worms. Since I'm writing in the cinematic present tense, the present participle can create a very different mood.

[LilyBLily]

Bright red, it is capped by a hologram of flaming red letters, spelling its name.

The present participle is another can of worms. Since I'm writing in the cinematic present tense, the present participle can create a very different mood.

Here your real issue is the interruption. Start with "Capped by..." and you suddenly notice you've used "red" twice. Not good.