I have this prickly feeling in the back of my neck. It seems to happen whenever there’s a shift in language usage, which—for a curmudgeon like me—is rarely a Good Thing.
I have a feeling we’re losing “whom.”
At least, we’re losing it in the places where it should be used. There’s a generous sprinkling of it in other places, of course: it seems that misuse of language outlasts correct usage by a long shot.
First, a quick review … who and whom are both pronouns. So how are they different?
Well, one is the subject of the clause. That would be who. Whom is used when it is the object of the clause. The George Thorogood song asking “who do you love?” might be toe-tapping, but it’s grammatically incorrect: the person being loved is the object of the clause, and so the question should be, properly speaking, “whom do you love?”
The lovely and venerated Grammar Girl offers the following trick for figuring out the who/whom conundrum: if you can say, “I love him,” then you’ll be using whom. Him, she notes, equals whom, and they both conveniently end with an “m,” so there you go. Which is all right when you’re referring to a male, but it works with females, too, just not as obviously: if it’s her, it’s whom.
The problem isn’t just that people don’t know when to use whom; it’s that a whole lot of folks don’t care. They appear to think that using whom sounds better, is more erudite or upper-class or clever. News flash: when used incorrectly, it’s not only none of those things, it paints one as quite the opposite.
Let’s not lose words: we need them all. But learn to use the ones we have correctly, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
