The Spelling and Grammar Nazi: Chapter 4

I’ve seen people make this mistake very often, and I felt it is time to address it officially. So here it is:

Who’s = Contraction, who is

Whose = possessive, belonging to whom

Furthermore, it pisses me all the way off when people use the word whom just to make themselves sound smarter. You may say that is an assumption, but if you don’t know HOW to use a word, then really you’re only using it because you THINK it’s fancy and want to sound fancier than you really are. Let me let you in on a secret: when you use a word incorrectly, it just makes you look stupid. Truly smart people don’t worry about how fancy their vocabulary is, they worry about how CORRECTLY they speak. THAT is what makes you sound intelligent, not malapropism.

Malapropism, by the way, is the official term for misusing a word because you don’t know what it actually means or have confused it with some other word.

Now on to the second real issue:

Whom is an indirect object. It is never the subject of a sentence. The subject form is WHO.

Nine times out of ten, the correct word to use is WHO, not WHOM. Don’t use whom just because you think it’s more “correct” than who. Don’t  use it because you think it “sounds better.” Only use it when it’s grammatically appropriate to use it.

Examples:

The son of whom

Belonging to whom

Notice that in both of these examples, there is a preposition present. For a list of prepositions, you may go here.

It is also grammatically correct to use it at the beginning of the sentence when who is the object. As seen here:

Whom are you speaking to during the conference?

In italics is whom, the object of the sentence. In bold is you, the subject of the sentence. Notice also that a preposition is present here as well. A preposition will almost always (99.9% of the time) be present when it is correct to use whom.

This beginning of the sentence usage is grammatically correct, HOWEVER, it is more common and accepted to substitute who for whom when the word is in this position.

Who are you speaking to during the conference?

The above sentence is perfectly acceptable.

I hope this helps people. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

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