Use of 所

[xianhua]

I'm having a little trouble sorting out this sentence, featured in 博雅汉语. The article is about a bride and groom.

他们所作的往往并不像你所想的那么浪漫.

The article then goes on to say they 拆红包 and 数钱, so does it mean something like "it isn't as romantic as you'd expect". I've just read that 所 can be used before a verb to act as the agent of the action, but I'm not certain how this works in practice. If we took out those 所's would it still make sense?

This is probably something quite simple, but I have gaps in my knowledge due to studying off and on.

[HashiriKata]

Both 所 in your sentence can be taken out without any detriment to the sentence. To me, the 所 in sentences of this type gives a kind of formal air to the sentence (but a proper explanation is along the line that it marks the verb of a modifying clause and the like, but you'll need someone better to explain this to you )

[Hofmann]

所 is a nominalizer, like 者, but referring to the object instead of the subject.

[Jose]

I think you can freely add 所 in front of any verb that is part of a relative clause that uses 的. To give you an example, if you buy a house you can say 我买了一栋房子 "I bought a house", and then you can refer to the house as 我买的（那栋）房子 "The house that I bought". In these cases you can throw in a 所 in front of the verb in the relative 的-clause: 我所买的（那栋）房子.

As Hashirikata said, this 所 is optional and slightly formal. In modern Chinese, it is usually combined with 的. However, in classical Chinese it is used on its own, and is regarded as a nominaliser, as Hofmann said, since it turns a verb, like 知 'know' or 欲 'desire', into a nominal expression: 所知 "what is known" 所欲 "what is desired". This classical use is the origin of many expressions in the modern language like 所以，所谓，所有, etc.

[seesaw]

And just another example: 所见即所得, which is the translation of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get, a computer term).

[xianhua]

Thanks for all these excellent explanations - especially Jose.

[flippant]

Cheers! This explains a lot.

[ertweryt]

to understand know clearly ,just add 3 samples as below:

我所了解的情况就是这些。

this is situation whichi know

该公司所生产的熊电视机很受顾客的欢迎。

the tv the company produced is very pupular

这本书所介绍的学习方法很有用。

the method that the book introduced is very useful

we can throwy away the 3 所 in the 3 example sentences,it doesn't make any difference.

the 所 here is the Auxiliary Verb,in front of the verb.

所＋verb can be acted as adj modifier