Please explain me the difference in usage of "that contains" and "containing" in the below two sentences.

Perhaps every travel guide that contains references to Italy recommends that tourists, especially those in search of a romantic atmosphere, visit the uniquely beautiful, "floating" city of Venice.

Perhaps every travel guide containing references to Italy recommends that tourists, especially those in search of a romantic atmosphere, visit the uniquely beautiful, "floating" city of Venice.

Is there any difference between the meaning of the above two sentences ?
In the situation like above, please guide me which sentence should I choose. One is using "that contains" and other using "containing". On which situation(s) do we use "that contains" and "containing".

Manhattan instructors please reply..

Thanks!

~GeeMate.

Let me give it a try. Instructors please correct me.

Perhaps every travel guide that contains references to Italy recommends that tourists, especially those in search of a romantic atmosphere, visit the uniquely beautiful, "floating" city of Venice.

Perhaps every travel guide containing references to Italy recommends that tourists, especially those in search of a romantic atmosphere, visit the uniquely beautiful, "floating" city of Venice.

Basically, we are discussing that contains vs containing

here the part - [that contains]/[containing] references to Italy - is very important to the meaning of the setence becuase Venice is in Italy. Only if there is reference to Italy in travel guide, we care about Venice. so, we have to use a restrictive relative clause starting with "that". i.e that contains references to Italy

Thinking on similar lines, now i am confused. How about saying -

, which contains references to Italy

i.e
Perhaps every travel guide , which contains references to Italy recommends that tourists, especially those in search of a romantic atmosphere, visit the uniquely beautiful, "floating" city of Venice.

At the time i started to express my thorughts, i assumed that i was clear on my thoughts, but while explaining my thoughts, i confused my self by adding "which" condition.

I am confused. Please help.

I believe both "that contains" and "containing" have the same relevance in these examples.

Only one is introducing a relative clause (that .....) , other is a present participial phrase (containing ...) / In fact you can convert a relative clause into a present participial phrase ,as you did with these examples ,without changing their meaning.
(not that these grammatical terms mean much - hope i am correct in identifying them as they are)

Both of them identify the same type of travel guide that is relevant in this context - the one that contains reference to Italy.

_________________
i ask so i can answer / i answer so i can learn

both of these are fine.

first, remember that -ING modifiers adopt the tense of the clause to which they are attached. therefore, to determine whether such a modifier is appropriate, you should temporarily convert the -ING form into the tense of the main clause, and ask yourself whether it makes sense in that tense.

in your example sentence, this question would become, "does it make sense if i say the guide contains references to italy?" (since the original sentence is in present tense --> convert the -ing to present tense)

i.e., if the action in the modifier is in a different tense from the action in the original clause, then you can no longer use an -ING modifier.

for instance:
all of the veterans who had sustained injuries in combat were awarded medals.
in this sentence, since "who had sustained" is in a different tense from the verb in the main clause ("were awarded"), you cannot use it in -ING form. (if you were to write "all of the veterans sustaining injuries...", you would imply that the medals were awarded at the time the injuries were being sustained!)

--

provided that you pass the basic tense test above, the decision between these two types of modifiers is mostly stylistic: basically, you choose whichever of the two modifiers leads to the least undesirable repetition of grammatical forms.

in your example, the present-tense verb "recommends" follows very soon after the modifier, so the modifier is a little bit unsavory if it includes another present-tense verb ("contains"). by using the -ING form of the modifier, you avoid this rather ugly duplication.

incidentally, this desire to avoid repeated structures seems to be more important on the gmat that many would think.
for instance, i remember a problem (you may want to search the forum) in which the official gmatprep chose the construction "evidence to suggest that..." over the construction "evidence that suggests that...", presumably simply because they didn't want to repeat "that" twice in the space of three words.

for what it's worth, i find it extremely unlikely that such stylistic distinctions will be dispositive on an official problem. (some test prep materials have the unfortunate tendency to single out such distinctions and then predicate entire problems upon them, failing to notice that they are usually ancillary to other, more important grammatical concerns in the original official problems.)
in other words, if you see this sort of distinction, you will most likely have easier distinctions on which you can make your decisions.