whowhom

The (Wahoo) Who or Whom Page:

"If I spoke perfect English, to whom would I speak it?"

I forget who said that, but I really like the sense of it.

When we speak, we almost always speak in informal situations, and we therefore use an informal dialect.

In speaking most of those informal dialects we seldom worry about who and whom.

Who ya gonna take to da dance, huh, Frank, who?

Or something like that is how most of us would ask Frank about his dancing partner, most of the time.

But on formal occasions:

Whom will you take to the dance, Franklin? Whom?

This is all about the tone of your message, not the meaning of the words.

And there will come times when you would like to use a tone in which there is a difference between who and whom.

Here's the difference:

Use "who" when it is the subject of the sentence or a predicate noun.

Subject of the sentence:

Who goes there?

Oh, for heaven's sake, who did this to Henrietta?

Predicate noun:

Fenwick Fenstermeir is who!

He is who!

Use "whom" when it is the direct object, indirect object or object of a preposition.

Direct Object:

Whom did you fire?

Helpful hint: since we tend to move words around when we ask a question, changing the question into a statement might help you to realize how a word in the front of the sentence ["whom"] is actually a direct object which is usually found at the end of a sentence:

"You did fire whom?"

Indirect Object:

Whom will you give the prize?

"You" is the subject and "prize" is the direct object, and "whom" is the indirect object.

You may think of indirect objects as objects of the preposition, "to" or "for", only without the preposition:

You will give the prize to whom?

More Objects of a Preposition:

You threw your typewriter at whom?

Or, less excitedly:

At whom did you throw your typewriter?

"Don't ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." wrote John Donne.

So: "Who" as a subject or predicate pronoun. "Whom" as an object. Pretty straight forward. Or it would be except for a couple of problems.

Sometimes we use "who" in a way that tricks us into thinking it should be an object.

The prize goes to him who survives.

In that sentence, you might think that "who" is an object of the preposition "to"; only what it really does is act as the subject to the verb "survives." (Thank you, Colin Brant for the correction)

Or here:

I know who barfed on Ms Jingleplunker's shoe.

In this sentence, the whole clause, ". . .who barfed on Ms Jinglephunker's shoe." is the direct object.

BUT, "who" is the subject of the clause so we want "who" instead of "whom."

I'm having trouble writing about this in an interesting way.

This makes me think I need to turn things over to you.

Here's some space for you to write some sentences using who/whom, write some owl jokes, or a note to yourself about how to use who/whom.

Please remember that play is always welcome in this program, so have some fun with it.

To return to Step Two, click here.