The Gormogons [High Praise!] explains the easy way to keep “who” and “whom” straight:
The rule is incredibly simple:
He = she = I = Who
Him = Her = Me = Whom
That’s it. Wherever you would use him, her, or me in a sentence, you can use whom. Give this to him/Give this to whom. Did you see her there?/Whom did you see there? He spoke to me./To whom did he speak? That sort of thing.
That should keep the Grammar Nazis off your Champs-Élysées for a while.
Now if only I could figure out a way to stop typing “teh”.
A simplier rule my father, a journalist, taught me: WHO does what….to WHOM.
Now if I could only keep I/me/myself straight.
That rule occurred to me one day, and I’ve used it for years. I would have been using it since grade school if grade school English teachers could figure it out.
While I’m ranting, I know teachers, especially English teachers, who know much less about grammar than I. The thing is, our high schools do a rotten job of teaching grammar. Prospective English teachers study English literature instead of writing, so by the time they start teaching, all they know is what they can remember from high school, which is precious little.
@Carolyn: There is too much; let me sum up.
It sounds complicated, but a few simple techniques can help: Strip out other nouns, add in any “understood” or omitted verbs, and see if it helps to replace the “I” or “me” with “he” or “him.” Restate and go. Whatever you do, don’t emulate usage by our cultural elite.
People usually mix up “I” and “me” when using I as an object in a sentence, such as, “Obama gave my family and I the shaft.” One way to make this one easier is to remove the other object or objects (“family”) and restate it, “Obama gave I the shaft.” That shouldn’t sound right, so it should be “Obama gave me the shaft,” or “Obama gave my family and me the shaft.” This method helps whenever the “I” or “me” is part of a larger group of nouns or pronouns.
Another quick rule is that you’ll usually use the subjective (I/he/she) when using the comparative “than,” as in “Frank J. is a wittier writer than I.” The shortcut here is that you can also add the omitted verb to see how it sounds as in, “Frank J. is a wittier writer than I am.” You’d never say, “Frank J. is a wittier writer than me am,” even if it were true.
One last trick is to swap the “I” or “me” with he or him to see how it sounds as Harvey does above for who versus whom.
As is true for his other meager efforts, Obama fails to get these right.
Now, onto a related peeve. Whyizzut that the people who are supposed to be the smartest in the world, such as Larry Summers and other elite university professors, can’t figure out that a person who graduates from a specific educational institution is an alumnus and not an alum? Alum is the stuff you put on shaving cuts to stop the bleeding. The nails on the chalkboard get worse when they extend “alum” into “alums.” Alum, the chemical, is a collective noun, but I guess Harvard alumni can’t figure that out.
But what about you they them and us?
Don’t forget “She and I” by Alabama.
Worse, what about I and eye? I have trouble with them.
Somewhere, I have a rule for you and ewe, but I can’t remember it.
Well, all I can say is whom poop a doop
I think most of the grammar I know came from studying foreign languages and realizing which bits apply in English, too. I’m pretty sure I was taught how to diagram a sentence at some point in public school, though; that was earlier, and it’s possible the inference from foreign languages is just more memorable.
I can get “lie” and “lay” confused, but I’m surprised at times by people who don’t intellectually know the difference. I heard someone once express that they thought that one was for inanimate subjects and the other for animate ones, which seemed to me an odd belief to have acquired. The first is something that something does, and the second is something that something does to something else. They share the vowel sounds of “rise” and “raise”; perhaps it can be remembered that, just as an object will rise if something raises it, an object will lie on a surface if something lays it on that surface.
The fact that CTCompromise thinks his mnemonic is simpler than yours, though, suggests that different people will find different things useful.
Ah Ha! Pronoun trouble. -Daffy Duck.
To the “alum” point, I’ll take that further:
I’m an alumna of Kappa Delta, not an alumnus. A group of people like me are called alumnae, not alumni. I can’t stand listening to the collegiates say, “When the alumni visit……” Arg.
And now I will brace for the responses that come with writing something like “a group of people like me” on IMAO.
Burma – thanks for that explanation by the way although now me have a headache.