Grammar Geek: When to Use Who or Whom

When to use who or whom can be either complicated or simplistic. It is always best to know the rules and thus the complicated version before you go for the easy, cheat version. This way, you will know you are right, every time.

When to Use Who or Whom: Know your Grammar

The complicated version calls for our memories of English grammar classes; those classes we slept through. To know who and whom, you need to know their place in the English language. Welcome back to your English class. Study hard!

Who and Whoever: The Subjective Pronouns

"Subjective pronouns" sounds more dramatic than it needs to. In a less wordy manner, who and whoever are subjects in a sentence. When I was in school, I was taught that the subject is the one doing the action. The verb of the sentence is this "action". Here are some examples:

Who knows the answer?

Who will go to class?

The purple is the subject, as it is the one doing the action. The action (verb) is in gold. Sadly, in life, everything doesn't come in simplistic sentences like that. If you get a long sentence, you should break it into parts to make it easier for yourself.

It is Jane, I believe, who likes fishing. 

As you can see, the part after the comma, becomes a new clause. "[W]ho likes fishing" follows the recipe, even though it is a longer sentence.

Subject = Who and Whoever

Whom and Whomever

Where who and whoever fall under the "subjective pronouns" class, whom and whomever fall under the objective case. This means it will be the object in a sentence. The action is therefore affecting this person.

I called him, the man whom I believed guilty. 

The particular part I want you to pay attention to is the fact that there is referred to (1) him, (2) the man and then finally (3) whom. This all refers to the same person, whereas I is mentioned twice. I is the person doing the action, whereas him is on the receiving end.

Object (receiving the action) = Whom and Whomever

Whenever you get a sentence, pull it apart to find the verb, subject and object in order to decide on the right one to use. So when do you use who or whom? After this lesson, can you figure this one out?

I wanted to go to the dance with whoever/whomever paid me the most attention.

If you said "whoever", you are correct. If you said "whomever", you should look at the word "paid". This is another verb in the sentence, which makes the word before the verb a subject.

The Cheat Method

If you are really stuck, and you can't pull your sentence apart, there is one more method you can try. As you noticed above, I drew your attention to him and whom being used together for the same person. This is the start of the substitution cheat. You can substitute as such:

Whom and whomever = can be replaced with him or her.
Who and whoever = can be replaced with he or she.

However, this is not foolproof and it is always best to try the more grammatically correct version by analysing your sentence. If your sentence proves too complicated, it is probably best to either rewrite it or divide it if possible. Long sentences can, after all, get too sloppy and hard to read.

I hope this will help you in your battle with who and whom! Feel free to comment if you have any tricks you use.

The image is from Pixabay.