Whom cares about who? Wait... (Wrong pronoun)

Who, whom, whoever, whomever. I would venture a guess that the figuring out the difference between these words is in the top 5 of most difficult grammar rules. It's certainly one that trips me up on a consistent basis.

Some writers and linguists argue that "whom" is on the way out in usage, with most people defaulting to the less formal seeming "who." Well, that's fine and dandy, but until "whom" is officially out of usage, we need to make sure we know how it properly fits into a sentence.

The simplest breakdown of the who vs. whom dilemma is this: Who functions as the subject of a sentence, whom functions as the object. Sounds easy enough, right?

It can be tricky to determine whether the word is actually being used correctly. Even the pros get it wrong sometimes.

Take the following headline from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Whom will Wilson replace on SF Giants' roster?

What do you think? Correct usage or not?

If you said correct, good job!

The headline's use of "whom" is right on. Wilson is doing the replacing, making him the subject of the headline. What he is replacing a somebody on the SF Giants' roster. Consequently, whom must be used in order to keep the person being replaced objective.

If it was Wilson being replaced rather than doing the replacing, then "who" would have been appropriate. In that case, the headline would have to read: Who will replace Wilson on SF Giants' roster?

In that case, neither Wilson nor the roster is the subject, so a nominative pronoun is needed to be the subject. Thus, who.

In the matter of who vs. whom, one little letter makes all the difference, so make sure you understand the usage of both words to avoid getting thrown off.



Schulman, Henry. "Whom will Wilson replace on SF Giants' roster?" San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/05/SPRE1IPMVU.DTL. 25 April 2011.