Use of That

So much of what I read misses the complementizer, that.

An example; “At fifty, they say, a man has the face he deserves” or “At fifty, they say, a man has the face that he deserves.”

In speech, short cuts do we take. It works because intonation and context imply the missing special subordinating conjunction, also known as the empty complementizer.

The complementizer can be inserted between the verb and the embedded clause without changing the meaning, or not.

In reading, well, the absence can jar. But sometimes so does the complementizer. One word too far, that.

In which case the sentence just needs rearranging. 

Consider; “Ultimately, that using the word ‘that’ as a conjunction is often superfluous cannot be denied.”

I say; using the word ‘that’ as a conjunction is often superfluous, and sometimes not. 

If you happen to be caught betwixt, then engineer yourself a solution without.