Whom Goes There?

May 4, 2010
By Philip B. Corbett

Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style. (Some frequently asked questions are here.)

We try, but we still haven’t quite mastered the whole who/whom situation.

At the risk of stating the obvious yet again, “who” is used as the subject of a relative clause; “whom” is used for an object.

For many speakers and writers, the common mistake is using “who” as an object, when traditional usage calls for “whom”: “I told her who I had invited.” Since this colloquial use of “who” is common in speech, it tends to slip into writing as well.

But for us, it seems that the opposite error is just as common — using “whom” when “who” is correct. This often occurs when an intervening attribution phrase throws us off track, or when the relative pronoun follows a preposition. Some recent examples, with help from a careful reader: ...

Click the post's title to read all of NY Times' article.

Who should I give the keys to? To whom should I give the keys?