Who or Whom?

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this has been a point of frustration for you in your writing.  This little article should be helpful for all of us.

To Whom?

Comments

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

I generally remember that whom follows a preposition, or it's the object of a verb. Maybe we could post a weekly grammar lesson. We all learned it a long time ago, so perhaps a refresher wouldn't hurt now and then. I see people use 'then' when it should be 'than', 'further' when it should be 'farther,' and 'worst' when it should be 'worse'. Just to name a few... "D

Further and Farther irk me the most when I'm watching a movie and there's incorrect use of those words.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

You would have loved my dad, the further/farther thing was one of his pet peeves.
The one that makes me cringe the most is the I or Me debacle. Seriously, if you wouldn't say Come with I, then don't say Come with Sue and I. Simple, but people have become so paranoid about it they just default into the (usually incorrect) use of I in a sentence.
So yeah, maybe a little grammer review for all of us.

[hypatia-66.livejournal.com]

There's an episode of MFU in which Napoleon asks a 'who' question of the receptionist who corrects him wrongly with 'whom'. Can't remember which episode, an early one I think. Annoys me every time.

'Whom' is losing out in common usage and people know less and less how or where to use it. Part of that must be down to English-speaking nations not learning foreign languages, particularly inflected languages like German or Russian, or the Scandinavian languages where 'whom' comes from.

The 'Sue and I' rather than 'Sue and me' thing has existed for ever. I found an example of it in my great-grandmother's diary of 1869. Now it's even more common usage - I suspect because 'Sue and I' has become a phrase or group and therefore the single object of the verb. Strangely, in the UK, but less in the States I think, we have the opposite phenomenon of an actual group taking a plural instead of a singular verb: 'the government are', 'the company are', etc.

BTW, don't get me started on 'phenomena' being used as a singular noun - I did Latin and Greek. I confess, however, that the further/farther distinction had escaped me till someone raised it in these forums (fora!)