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It Seems That the Who/Whom Dilemma Still Affects Some of Us…
Who is the subjective or nominative case of the word; in plain English, who acts as a subject or predicate nominative…most of the time. I don’t know who you are. Who steals my purse steals trash.
Whom is objective case; that is, it must be an object. It will follow a preposition or a verb that requires a direct object. That is the girl to whom I spoke.
In inverted sentence structure or in question form, occasionally who replaces whom. For example, You are whom? is the inverted form of Who are you? Unless you are comfortable and very confident in the use of who and whom, I recommend avoiding inverted structure.
5 Comments
hi doll, I’m laughting at the person saying who is that at whom you are laughing. Or something. Clears things up anyway.
Yeah, well, I suppose it does sound funny — but a lot of correct grammar is like that.
“This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” — Winston Churchill
I try to use correct grammar, except when I’m too tired or rushed to care, and I have found http://www.dictionary.com to be a quick and useful tool. Maybe BlogIt could work out a link-sharing deal with them. When I get too hung up on my grammar, I can’t write well because I can’t see the forest for the trees.
Though what dear Winnie actually wrote was: “This is arrant nonsense, up with which I shall not put.” This marvellous rejoinder was made to a hapless editor who rearranged the wording of a sentence in one of his speeches so that it would not end with a preposition — which isn’t wrong in all cases, anyway.
Whom just never sounds right.