Calm Down About "Whom"

I’ve gone over what makes a sentence quite a few times lately (subject + verb + direct object if needed), so now seems a good time to go over who and whom, since those two words are closely related to sentence structure.

The question of when to use who or whom is one of the most common grammatical questions in the English-speaking portion of the world. 

(Toby was right, naturally.)

The explanation is actually pretty simple: use who when the word is the subject of the sentence (or an embedded clause—more on that in a moment) and use whom when it isn’t the subject.

     Who      bought    these cookies?

   Subject     Verb      Direct Object

        To whom              should          I           give       the cookie?

   Indirect Object         Verbal      Subject     Verb         Direct

(i.e. not the subject)   Auxiliary                                    Object

An embedded clause is basically a sentence within a sentence—it has its own subject and verb:

     We       need to find out         who bought these cookies.

   Subject         Verbs             Embedded clause with who as its subject

I could go on for much longer about how to properly use who and whom, but I’m not going to; Matthew Inman has already done a great (and much more entertaining) breakdown of that over at The Oatmeal. What I would like to delve into is why—why whom is so tricky, and why you should (or shouldn’t) use it.

Why Whom Is Tricky

(This section is pretty in-depth, so if you’re just interested in advice on using whom, skip to the next section)

There are quite a few pronouns that have both a subjective form and an objective form. For example:

I and me, she and her—we’re all used to these pronoun pairs, right? We don’t have to stop and think for a moment to figure out whether to say they or them. So why are who and whom difficult to keep straight?

Part of the answer is that who is different from the other pronouns shown in that chart. I, you, he, she, and they are all personal pronouns. Who, on the other hand, is what we call an interrogative pronoun—a pronoun that asks which person or thing is meant. Let’s look at who and whom on a chart with other interrogative pronouns:

Notice how who stands out? It’s literally the only interrogative pronoun in the English language that changes depending on how it is used. No wonder it’s so hard to use, when every similar word works in a completely different (and far simpler) manner!

So why is who different from all the other interrogative pronouns? Well, language is constantly evolving—new uses for words develop while old ones fall away and disappear. All those other interrogative pronouns probably used to have objective forms that fell out of use long before the language began to form into what it is today. The same thing happened to you. Take a look at that first chart up above—notice how you is the only personal pronoun on the chart that doesn’t have a distinct objective form. But that wasn’t always the case.

There was a time when you not only had an objective form, but also had a separate singular form that declined into its own objective. So our chart above would once have looked something like this:

Over time, thou, thee, and ye all fell out of use; these days, we use you in all of the instances where we would once have used those other words. Imagine if English teachers around the world suddenly began to demand that we all resume using thou, thee, and ye. It wouldn’t go well—it would be confusing and irritating if people tried to force us to use words that don’t improve or enhance our ability to communicate. But, for some stubborn reason, that’s exactly what people do with whom. We don’t need the word; it doesn’t improve the language. But people just won’t let it go.

Why You Should Use Whom and Why You Shouldn’t

Whom is on its way out—give us another century, tops, and it won’t really be part of the language anymore. It’ll be an abandoned, archaic word like thou or whence; a word we all know used to be part of the language, something we can find in older books, but not a word that even the most demanding college professors demand we use. And good riddance to it.

Most of the time, my advice to new writers is to pay attention to all of the rules of grammar—don’t risk looking inept because you don’t care about comma splices or the difference between amused and humored. Whom, on the other hand, is one of the rare bits of grammar that I feel beginning writers can safely ignore. In fact, you'll look worse if you use whom incorrectly than you will if you don't use it at all!

Generally, whom is not a word you should bother with unless you have a specific purpose in mind. If you are striving for an intellectual and formal tone to your story, than go ahead and whom it up. If you have an educated or pedantic character, you can pepper their language with whoms. But if you want your dialog or your prose to feel more relaxed and natural, then get rid of the word. It’s not something that most editors will be bothered by—if they really feel that you need to use whom, then they’ll tell you; but they won’t reject your manuscript because of it.

Infinitives: To Split or Not To Split?

Just what is an infinitive, and how does one split it? The answer is pretty simple: an infinitive is the basic, unconjugated form of a verb. In English, infinitives take the form of “to ____.”  To read, to run, to imagine. From this basic infinitive, the verb can be transformed to meet many needs of speech:

     I eat.

     She eats.

     They ate.

     We’re eating.

     You should have eaten.

There are many other forms a verb can take—all of them drop the “to” from the infinitive form of the verb and then alter the primary word to suit the context of the sentence. But that basic “to ____” form is the starting point.

So, how do you split the infinitive form of a verb? Simple. You just place an adverb between the “to” and the rest of the verb:

     She wanted to furiously pound his face in.

You may have had an English teacher at some point who considered splitting infinitives to be the eighth deadly sin—an unforgivable perversion of the language. It’s really not, though it is something that you should do only infrequently.

Why is splitting the infinitive considered so bad? Well, to answer that we need to delve a bit into (a simplified version of) the history of the language.

A Simplified History of English

A long time ago, out there in Europe, Latin was considered the crème de la crème of languages. Most European languages had evolved out of Latin, and it was generally considered the “holy” language of academics and the church. The language that would eventually come to be known as English, meanwhile, was a young hodgepodge of barbarian speech and “proper” languages—the bastard child of a dozen different parents. It lacked a consistent grammatical structure and written form.

However, a number of scholars who spoke this proto-English were beginning to appear, and they wanted to make their language a respectable equal with all of those other European languages. They set about to codify and clarify the rules of the language, and found a large amount of gaps where there were no consistent rules to English. Whenever that happened, they simply borrowed rules from the most respectable language around: Latin.

Why was this a problem? Well, here’s the infinitive form of the verb “to read” in Latin: legere.  Notice how it differs from the English version—it’s only one word. So because it is literally impossible to split an infinitive in Latin, it was decided that it wouldn’t be allowed in English, either.

Back to the Present Day

Doesn’t that seem a little silly nowadays? We’re refusing to make use of a relatively unique ability of our language because a once-popular language couldn’t split an infinitive. Well, I don’t hold to that. There are times when you just need to split an infinitive, dang it! For instance:

That’s probably the most famous split infinitive around. Sure, they didn’t have to split the infinitive, but try re-writing that line without it:

     Boldy to go where no one has gone before.

     To go boldly where no one has gone before.

     To go where no one has gone before.

None of those rewrites have the same power as the original, do they? “To boldly go” is simply the most powerful and moving way to write that sentence. Split infinitives for the win!

However . . .

The potential power of split infinitives notwithstanding, you shouldn’t be using them often. Most of the time, split infinitives simply sound awkward and forced—adverbs are already difficult enough to use well on their own, after all. Compare this sentence that uses a split infinitive:

     He needed to quickly devour his meal.

to this sentence that does not:

     He needed to devour his meal quickly.

The second one is stronger—it just feels more natural and smooth. Most of the time, your writing will be better off if you avoid splitting infinitives. Just remember, though, that it is an option. The day may come when a split infinitive will strengthen your writing, so know what you’re doing when that time comes.