When do you use whom vs who

Jump to Navigation. Who Versus Whom. By Mignon Fogarty Grammar Girl. August 18, We are currently experiencing playback issues on Safari. If you would like to listen to the audio, please use Google Chrome or Firefox. About the Author. Follow Facebook Linkedin Pinterest. Break down the sentence thus: You ask him he reads that book to answer the question. If you apply those two rules and you're still not sure, apply the all-important Rule 3. Because even grammarians are likely to squabble over which to use.

But always — always — apply rules 1 and 2 before using Rule 3. And to see if you're better than the Associated Press, click here. Who is correct? Yes, though it may depend on whom you ask!

In such simple cases, virtually everyone can determine the proper choice: Who is that masked man? OK, a quick test. Who and whom also frequently function as relative pronouns, which means that they refer to a noun or noun phrase that was mentioned earlier:. Again, some analysis is required to determine if who here is in the object position and should therefore technically be whom. Relative pronouns introduce subordinate clauses, a subordinate clause being a group of words that has a subject and predicate but that doesn't by itself form a complete sentence.

In the sentences above, the subordinate clauses are "who told my dog about the sandwich" and "who my dog apologized to. In "The person who told my dog about the sandwich was unhelpful," who refers to "the person," which is the subject of both predicates: "told my dog about the sandwich" and "was unhelpful. To make that second one grammatical, we have to do some rearranging, as we did with the questions:.

In "The sandwich's owner, who my dog apologized to, requires a replacement sandwich," the subject of the verb apologized is "my dog"; who is actually the object of the preposition to , which means that whom is the preferred pronoun here:.

These can be tricky so we'll analyze a few more examples. Plus, this sandwich-dog drama goes deeper. According to my cat, who was among those witness to the sandwich consumption, the sandwich appeared to have been abandoned.

Is who here correct? Yes: because who , while referring to "my cat," is the subject of the predicate "was among those witness to the sandwich consumption. How about here? In this case, who refers again to "my cat," but is the object of the verb believe : "I was eager to believe my cat. See here:. Here, we have the conjunction that introducing a subordinate clause headed by the pronoun who. The first part of our analysis is determining the subject and predicate of the entire sentence.

The subject is I ; the predicate is everything else. Know is the main verb, and everything else is actually the object of that verb: "I know x.

Now that we know much, we can focus on what who is doing in that very long subordinate clause:.