Who, Whom, and How to Misuse a Pronoun

Liz here. Well, we avoided it as long as we could. It was bound to come up sooner or later. Today, we're cov­er­ing the appar­ent mother of all gram­mat­i­cal quan­daries: who and whom.

Dr. Who, Whom the show, Dr. Who, is about

Put sim­ply, who is a sub­jec­tive pro­noun. Whom is an objec­tive pro­noun. Who goes along with the other sub­jec­tive pro­nouns like he, she, we, and they. Whom fits in with him, her, us, and them.

Kyle, who suf­fered from severe stage fright, often won­dered how he ended up in his line of work as the chan­nel 4 weatherman.

Kyle hated that his ther­a­pist whom he had just started see­ing didn't seem to take his pho­bia seriously.

If you restruc­ture the who/whom sec­tions of those sen­tences, you get the following:

Kyle suf­fered from severe stage fright.

He had just started see­ing his therapist.

Who is a sub­ject. Whom is an object. Any questions?

A quick bit of news: 14 Prompts is now avail­able through Amazon. If you'd like to pur­chase 14 Prompts for your Kindle or desk­top reader, get your copy on Amazon.

PRACTICE

Write for fif­teen min­utes about a doctor/psychiatrist/veterinarian with an unusual patient.

Use who and whom prop­erly as the bewil­der­ing sit­u­a­tion unfolds.

About the Author

Liz Bureman

Liz acts as The Write Practices resident snark and Copy Queen. She lives in Denver and loves it.

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  • Godprovidesall

    Covered this topic in a gram­mar cur­ricu­lum with my 6th & 8th grader. It said use who as a sub­ject or a pred­i­cate nom­i­na­tive, oth­er­wise use whom. We rearrange ques­tions into sen­tence form (unless it's a ques­tion that could also be a state­ment), pick out the sub­ject, and then decide if the "who" refers to the sub­ject. If it does not then they know to use whom.

  • Pingback: Who, Whom, and How to Misuse a Pronoun « Education and Technology for Future

  • Pingback: Who’s Whose: More Help With Pronouns | The Write Practice

  • http://stealingcommas.blogspot.com/ chris the cynic

    Angie was clos­ing up when she heard the rear door open. The rear door that she'd just locked. As qui­etly as she could she went to her desk and took out the flash­light she kept for emer­gen­cies. She felt its weight, and con­cluded it would make a ser­vice­able club. Then she moved toward the rear door.

    I'm not here to hurt you,” she heard his voice before she saw the man. He was mostly in shadow, what lit­tle of him she could see was illu­mi­nated by a street­light shin­ing through a win­dow. His hand were empty, palms fac­ing toward her.

    She could see that he was unarmed, but that didn't mean he wasn't a threat. She kept her flash­light ready. “Who are you?”

    I'm some­one who needs help.” She didn't dis­agree, the longer she looked at him the more con­vinced that he was injured and in pain. It wasn't any one thing, more his over­all appear­ance. “I was hit by a car.”

    I'm a vet. If you're not a spaniel you don't belong here. Go to a hospital.”

    Doctors can't help me.”

    Why not?”

    Because I need some­one, whom I can trust, whose train­ing includes how to treat wings.” He took a pained step for­ward, and as he moved fur­ther into the light of the win­dow Angie saw some­thing that wan't pos­si­ble. On his back were two giant wings. Mostly white, but stained with blood.

    She strug­gled for words, she strug­gled to process any­thing. The flash­light hit the floor, but she didn't notice drop­ping it. “Who are you?”

    My name is Colin, we met once before.”

    -

    The lights were on, Colin was sit­ting on a table while Angie exam­ined his wings. The left seemed fine. The right one not so much. Angie told Colin she'd never done any­thing like this before, he sug­gested she imag­ine he was a giant parakeet.

    It's bro­ken. I'll have to set the bone.”

    Colin sighed, “Great.”

    So, who hit you?”

    A jerk for whom noth­ing is sacred, least of all the traf­fic laws. I was– OW!”

    Sorry. I told you I had to set the bone.”

    -

    So, where will you go?”

    Whither.”

    What?”

    'Whence did you come?' 'Where are you?' 'Whither will you go?' You should have said 'whither' not 'where'.”

    I'm not going to say that. That just sounds silly.” Colin stared at her. “Who says that?”

    I do.”

    The ques­tion stands: to what place are you going?”

    Probably into the woods. I'll find an iso­lated spot where there's no one by whom I will be seen.”

  • Skipper Hammond

    The who/whom is not so sim­ple. Because it's not just a nice log­i­cal gram­mar ques­tion. It's also a ques­tion of style and social class. The writer needs to con­sider the reac­tion she wants from her read­ers. Whom is offen­sive, snob­bish to the ears of most English speak­ers today.

    • http://writex3.blogspot.com/ Steph

      I agree! In my sub­mis­sion, I used "whom" for char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and a hint at grow­ing con­flict between two mem­bers of dif­fer­ent social classes. Thanks for putting this into words. Now, whether or not I used it incor­rectly cor­rectly or not is still await­ing judgement :-).

    • http://twitter.com/epbure liz

      You're absolutely right, Skipper, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion mat­ters when decid­ing whether to use who or whom. That's one thing that makes my part­ner­ship with Joe here on the Write Practice fun: as much as I'm a stick­ler for gram­mar, he throws the rules out the win­dow and makes his own when he writes. That's the beau­ti­ful thing about writ­ing: we have estab­lished rules, but ulti­mately, it's your deci­sion how you use them!

      Thanks for your com­ment! Happy writing :)

  • Anonymous

    Good morn­ing, Mr. Arkin, please come in and have a seat.”

    Mr. Arkin, nod­ded at his psy­chi­a­trist, but didn’t sit. He stood near the door, eye­ing a large pot­ted dra­cena, which looked like a six foot tall corn plant. It occu­pied the cor­ner near the window.

    Have a seat, please, Mr. Arkin,” the psy­chi­a­trist ges­tured toward a large com­fort­able look­ing arm­chair across from his own seat, and also across from the shiny green dracena.

    Are you going to intro­duce me to him?” said Mr. Arkin, his eyes still on the plant.

    Introduce you to whom, Mr. Arkin?”

    Him in the green suit, the big guy. Is he a foot­ball player?”

    There’s noth­ing in the cor­ner but a plant Mr. Arkin.”

    Plant,” said Mr. Arkin, and he took a seat but kept his feet squarely on the floor and his back straight. He nod­ded at the plant, and winked.

    Are you tak­ing your med­ica­tion Mr. Arkin?”

    Yes, but there’s a plant in the room. He’s onto us.”

    Did you take you med­i­cine this morn­ing, Mr. Arkin. When did you last take your medicine?”

    I take it when­ever they tell me to.”

    When who tells you too?”

    Not the plants that’s for sure”

    The psy­chi­a­trist picked up the phone, rang his sec­re­tary, and asked her to make sure there was a room avail­able on the psy­chi­atric unit.

    If there are any plants in the avail­able room, please ask who­ever is in charge today to have them moved out.”

    • Steph

      I think you nailed them both, and in voice with the char­ac­ters, no less. Great dia­logue, too.

      • Anonymous

        Thank you Steph

  • kati

    ahhh, Liz, you are always a balm for my grammar-weary embat­tled brain! this stuff is so impor­tant, alas, but only for a cho­sen few.

    a cursed bless­ing, to be sure, to be counted as one who deeply val­ues the "m" that makes a who, a whom. thanks for being so brave!

    now, how about who's, and whose?!?

    • http://twitter.com/epbure liz

      Next week, Kati. I've also seen that more often than I would like. Drives me bananas.

      • kati

        i shall wait with baited breath :-)

        • Maribeth

          The phrase is "bated breath." :)

          • http://joebunting.com Joe Bunting

            Ha! Quite true, but it is quite intrigu­ing to think of a breath dan­gling with trep­i­da­tion, pierced by a hook, and about to be cast into the sea.

          • kati

            how awe­some mari­beth, never knew this, guess i've never seen it in writ­ten form! (i actu­ally always had Joe's visual of the hook in my brain)

            i had to check out the back­story on the phrase. here's what answers.com had to say:

            BATED is short for ABATED, or ceased; it just means hold­ing your breath. Bated breath is breath­ing that is dif­fi­cult because of emotion.

            now i think i like the phrase even more.

  • Nancy

    True Story: I was a PR con­sul­tant at the company.

    I’m not sure what I’m look­ing at here, Mr. um—“ Dr. Hogsmith looked at the chart. “Mr. Dyson. Not sure at all, but I think I rec­og­nize that smell.”

    Do I have t’explain to ya, Doc?,” asked Rex Dyson. “I’m in real live pain. Just remove it.” He wig­gled side to side on the edge of the doctor’s exam­in­ing table.

    Please start by telling me the name of the per­son with whom you are trav­el­ling. We need to know whom to call in case you pass out.”

    I’m here with my wife, who—“

    That’s a relief. Go on.”

    —my wife who heard me a-cryin’ out in utter pain and came ta run­ning. She’s the one sit­ting in the ER lobby in the Rangers T-shirt. The one who has the shocked look smeared all over her face.”

    Where were you when this happened?”

    Well we were sit­ting around the camp­fire hav­ing a beer with the folks who are stay­ing in the tent next t’ours. Nice folks they was. Then I needs ta go ta the privy. Who doesn’t after a cou­ple, three PBR’s. Know what I mean?”

    Yes. I’m a doctor.”

    So I grabs my flash­light and runs to the out­house where I turns around to sit on the seat. Then I feel some­thing furry on my back and I won­ders who was in there first. Know what I mean?”

    Not really.”

    Somehow or t’other this furry thing behind me crawls around and then bites me. I’m in shock not know­ing who was doing what. All I knowed was to whom. Me! I reach down under myself and feels a neck. When I opens both hands to grab it, my flash­light falls into the pit with a splash. But never mind. I squeeze and I holler bloody mur­der hop­ing some­one would help me. Didn’t mat­ter who. It was my wife who came first.

    I squeezed so hard I killed it. But it’s jaw was clamped on me. I think rigor mor­tis set in fast. Cuz here it is, still dead, still clampin’.”

    Got insur­ance?”

    Sure. I don’t remem­ber to whom my wife gave the card. I think it was the recep­tion­ist who took it.”

    Just then the phone rang and the doc­tor walked over to the gray metal desk next to the sink. “Dr. Hogsmith here. Yes. Yes. I see.” The doc­tor turned around and gazed sadly at the poor camper, who sat on the exam­in­ing table with a big black fur ball on his lap. “I have some bad news, sir. My recep­tion­ist has just spo­ken with the Risky Business Insurance Company, and an account man­ager, who was named Flo, was quite curt and unapolo­getic. She explained that their claims sec­tion shows no allowance for a skunk-ectomy. I’m sorry.”

  • http://writex3.blogspot.com/ Steph

    I'm not sure if this is right, but here's a try!:

    Rex eased the door open to find the room smoth­ered in dark­ness. The
    cur­tains were drawn and a blan­ket was draped along the top of the road
    and it hung along the window’s edge to keep sun­light from seep­ing in.
    He remem­bered using that trick to darken the room at nap­time when RJ
    was a baby. Had the mys­tery girl woken up while he was gone?

    As if in answer to his ques­tion, a per­son rose from the bot­tom bunk.
    But the shape was large in the dark­ness, much broader than the wisp of
    a girl who had washed up down shore the night before. His hand jerked
    to the pis­tol on his hip.

    Rex! You’re back late.”

    Recognizing Dr. Miller’s voice, Rex relaxed. “Yup, I just pulled in
    from Jack Pine. The train didn’t show up until almost noon. Thought I
    would check on our patient before head­ing up to the mine, but I see
    you beat me to it.” There was an awk­ward pause. “What exactly are you
    doing, Doc?”

    The sec­ond day, post-injury, is the most crit­i­cal for the patient
    whom has suf­fered head trauma. Without the means to con­trol
    intracra­nial pres­sure – intracra­nial, of course, being derived from
    the Latin pre­fix intra-, mean­ing within, and cra­nium, which is Latin
    for skull, though the term orig­i­nates in the Greek lan­guage – there is
    lit­tle I can do beyond admin­is­ter­ing mouth-to-mouth ventilation.”

    So our sub­ject here,” Rex began, tak­ing a dis­crete stab at Dr.
    Miller’s improper choice of pro­noun, “is suf­fer­ing from a swelling of
    the brain, eh?” And of course I know what intracra­nial means, you
    pompous man of let­ters, he wanted to add.

    And then the grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion fell upon him. Given the
    dark­ened room, he had assumed the girl had come to and that the
    win­dows had been blocked off to help her rest. But mouth-to-mouth
    ven­ti­la­tion implied the oppo­site: the girl was dead.

    • Anonymous

      Ha! Step, not only do you write very well in set­ting up the scene, char­ac­ters etc; but then you man­age to get the whom in here incor­rectly, and then, to top it off, you have Rex make fun of Dr. Miller for using it when he should have used who since "the patient" in the doc­tors sen­tence is the sub­ject, mak­ing whom the wrong pro­noun. Darn, you're really good. In the first line there's a lit­tle typo that I'm sure you'll notice. You say road when you mean rod I believe.

      • http://writex3.blogspot.com/2012/01/little-head-hopping-anyone.html Steph

        Ha, ha — yes, "rod," not "road!" Thanks for the feed­back, Marianne. I kinda turned the old nog­gin inside out on this one, wasn't sure what was which by the time I was done! ;-)

        • Nancy

          You've got the who s–what is the plural of who?–but just missed the whom. Like most peo­ple do. Good try, though.

          • http://writex3.blogspot.com/ Steph

            Are you refer­ring to the actual "whom" that appears in the text? If so, that is an inten­tional misusage.

  • Elaine

    Dr. Caudill didn’t know whom to expect when she saw the name “Fido” on the chart that Elsie handed her. Who would be named Fido, she won­dered. Her prac­tice as a geri­atric psy­chi­a­trist encom­passed many quirky elder cit­i­zens, but at least until now not one who went by the name Fido.

    She pressed the inter­com but­ton to sum­mon Elsie, who was often slow in answer­ing a call but did have exquis­itely painted and buffed fingernails.

    Send in Mr. Fido, please,” Dr. Caudill said.

    Will do, Dr. C,” came Elsie’s voice. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

    Just send him in, Elsie, and thanks.”

    The door to the con­sult­ing room opened. The patient who walked in could have been 98 years or 198 years old. He looked to Dr. C as she imag­ined Coleridge’s ancient mariner might have looked—and he was a char­ac­ter whom she’d always been fas­ci­nated by.

    Mr. Fido?” the doc­tor asked.
    “You can call me S.T.,” replied the patient. “Like Coleridge.”

    Dr. Caudill hope that Fido, who was tak­ing off his over­coat as he spoke, didn’t notice the widen­ing of her eyes when he men­tion the author who had come to her mind mere sec­onds ago.

    Very well, S.T.,” she began. “What can we do for you today?”

    Well,” Fido said, “there’s a big ugly bird hang­ing around my old oak tree whom I’ve been try­ing to drive off, but the bas­tard refuses to fly away. I’m start­ing to won­der if the whole ominous-bird sce­nario is in my mind. You can tell me whether I’m crazy, I hope.”

    * * *

    So Dr. Caudill took on Fido’s case. After many ses­sions with him, she deter­mined that there was indeed a large bird on his prop­erty. Together they worked on strate­gies to drive off the ornery avian, who was start­ing to drive BOTH of them crazy.

    The strat­egy that finally worked was hav­ing S.T. rig a trapeze in the tree’s high­est branches. Then, while hang­ing by his knees from the bar, S.T. shouted and waved his hands wildly. That the ancient man was some­one who could pull off this stunt came as a great sur­prise to both doc­tor and patient.

    The day came for Mr. Fido’s final appointment.

    I’ll never for­get you, Dr. C,” Fido said. “You’re prob­a­bly the only psy­chi­a­trist in the world to whom the state­ment ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ means nothing!”

    • Anonymous

      This is so good, and again funny. I like the ref­er­ences to the Ancient Mariner. Is the "ornery avian" Coleridge's oner­ous bird, the alba­tross? I do won­der if they actu­ally shot Fido at the bird or if his swing­ing in the tree just scared it off. I like the final use of whom, with the com­ment about the old dog (Fido). This is soo good, tongue in cheek, funny. Thank you very much Elaine.

  • Kirk Longuski

    "So can you treat me or not?" I asked, look­ing up at the bald headed doc­tor, mouth agape.

    "I'm not awake, of course I can't treat you."

    I sighed "Look doc, I know this isn't easy for you, but I don't have a ton of options. Pretend you're dream­ing if it's eas­ier for you." I cocked my head to the side and whim­pered. There are very few peo­ple that can resist that, and none of them become veterinarians.

    "Fine." he finally said "but if we're doing this, let's start now. I don't want a dog who may or may not talk here when every­one else comes in."

    "Whom."

    "What?"

    "Never mind." I jumped up on the table, low­er­ing my haunches gin­gerly. Most of the bleed­ing had stopped, but the bite taken from the meat of my back leg still hurt like a fucker. "You'll see, this will be eas­ier than your other patients. I can tell you where it hurts, I can tell you how nice you look today. I'm very polite."

    "You're a dog whom has no vocal cords. You can't be polite."

    "Who."

    "What?"

    "Never mind. I'm not actu­ally speak­ing, I'm using low grade telekine­sis to vibrate the air in pat­terns you asso­ciate with speech. I was a test sub­ject, the army thought it would be really cool to have some tele­ki­netic sol­diers, but they could never make the process potent enough to be use­ful. At least to some­one with a good speech appa­ra­tus already."

    He was inspect­ing my wound, and as his fin­gers brushed it I yelped; I couldn't help it. It was like my whole back­side was a throb­bing tooth, wait­ing to send out bolts of pain and sickly, fever­ish heat.

    "Sorry."

    "It's okay, just go easy. It was a guard dog, big doberman."

    "You were try­ing to break in someplace?"

    "Break out. I told you I was a lab animal."

    "Great. I have a talk­ing dog lying on a table who is also an escaped convict."

    "Whom." I mur­mured, even as I felt another wave of dizziness.

    "What?"

    "Never mind, can you hurry up, please? The dog who bit me wasn't exactly hygienic, I'm sure I've got an infec­tion starting."

    "Don't you mean whom?"

    "This can't be happening."

    The doc­tor patched me up just fine, and I trot­ted off. I had no way to pay him, which sucked for some­one whom needed the money so badly.

    • Anonymous

      What a story. I love the talk­ing dog who has escaped from the lab idea. The doc­tor is so funny when he says he that the dog can't talk because he has no vocal cords and when he wor­ries about treat­ing "an escaped con­vict". You have an amaz­ing imag­i­na­tion. My sis­ter was telling me about a mur­der mys­tery series that's come out recently with a dog as one of two part­ners who solve crimes. I wish I could remem­ber the title. The dog doesn't talk but he does think in English. This was really funny and good. Whom was used incor­rectly though. I guess you meant to do that? Is the vet really sleep­ing? I think maybe both of these char­ac­ters need to go to a psy­chi­a­trist. Have you con­sid­ered doing a longer piece using these two characters?

    • http://writex3.blogspot.com/2012/01/little-head-hopping-anyone.html Steph

      I like your talk­ing dog! An escaped lab ani­mal, great con­cept. I agree with Marianne, I think the "whoms" are incor­rectly used, but again, maybe it was inten­tional. Plus, I don't claim to be any expert in this area!

  • Jason

    He placed his glasses on the table and arranged the papers on his desk, his usual rou­tine before a new patient was about to arrive. John made sure that the water pitcher on the table had enough water and the pil­lows were arranged in the proper order. Lastly, he fixed him­self a large glass of green tea that he sips on through­out most meetings.

    "Uh, um, hello," he heard as he was just sit­ting down in his chair. "The door was open or I would have knocked." the new patient said.

    The new patient stood there awk­wardly. John looked him over before speak­ing. He appeared to be six­teen or sev­en­teen, six foot one with black hair and dark fea­tures. He was wear­ing skinny black jeans, a black shirt and a black leather jacket. John noticed that he had an anar­chy sign made of safety pins on the front of his t-shirt. It stood out as the only non-black item about his wardrobe.

    "Oh! I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Please come in. Have a seat over there on the sofa."

    The new patient sat down on the sofa and placed his hands deep in his lap.

    John took his usual place in the large leather recliner that his father, also a psy­chi­a­trist, had bought him when he first opened his prac­tice twenty years ago. John thought about his father, whom he had always admired, as he placed his glasses on and grabbed his pen and paper.

    "So your mother, who is an old friend of mine, tells me you wanted to speak to some­body. Your name is Patrick, right?", John said.

    "Yeah, but nobody calls me Patrick. You can call me Pat.", he said with a low, almost whis­per, of a voice.

    "What would you like to talk about, Pat?", John asked.

    "College, actu­ally.", Pat said.

    "Okay. Well what about col­lege would you like to talk about?", John asked some­what surprised.

    "This is my senior year in high school and I've been think­ing of apply­ing to col­leges lately. My mom never went to col­lege so I asked her if there was any­one I could get some advice from. She told me that I should speak to the most intel­li­gent per­son she knows and set this appoint­ment up with you.", Pat explained.

    John began to blush and put down his pen and paper some­what relieved. He began to real­ize that this was not going to be such a tough meet­ing after all. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

    • Anonymous

      Hey this is inter­est­ing Jason. I like the descrip­tion of the anar­chy sym­bol made with safety pins on the boys shirt. The "whom" fits right in and wouldn't even be notice­able if I hadn't been look­ing for it. I see John as young and new to his job, a lit­tle afraid of a patient who really isn't very scary. He is not the "nor­mal" lit­er­ary psy­chi­a­trist and that makes me like him. Thanks

    • http://writex3.blogspot.com/2012/01/little-head-hopping-anyone.html Steph

      I had to read this twice to find your "whom." Nicely done! I like the story's les­son about judge­ment as well.