The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write It * How to Deliver It

Whom/who

Grammarians have been predicting the doom of whom for a long time, but it survives today in the speech and writing of educated people. It is not really difficult to learn when to use whom, and when to use who if you understand the grammatical principle involved. Whom is the objective form of the pronoun who. It is the correct form for the object of a verb or a preposition. Most people have no trouble knowing when to use whom if the pronoun is preceded immediately by a preposition, as in "To whom will you give the money?" But certain constructions can be troublesome. A sentence like "Give the message to whoever answers the telephone" often comes out "Give the message to whomever answers the telephone." That's because we tend to select ...