I recently learned (in my mid-40s) that I've been figuring this out the hard way most of my life.
I always diagram the sentence in my head, as in: The subject is fear, the object is Rush, so it's 'whom.'
My wife has a simple grammar rule that if him/her works then it's whom, if she/he fits better then it's who.
I feel like my primary school teachers did me dirty.
That's it. That's exactly how it works. People act like using whom instead of who is fancy, but it's really no more complicated than knowing the difference between he and him or she and her.
16 replies
I recently learned (in my mid-40s) that I've been figuring this out the hard way most of my life.
I always diagram the sentence in my head, as in: The subject is fear, the object is Rush, so it's 'whom.'
My wife has a simple grammar rule that if
him/herworks then it's whom, ifshe/hefits better then it's who.I feel like my primary school teachers did me dirty.
That's it. That's exactly how it works. People act like using whom instead of who is fancy, but it's really no more complicated than knowing the difference between he and him or she and her.
I just assume that if what you're referring to is "them", it's "whom".
I cannot learn otherwise, I am too stupid.
Yeah, them = whom and they = who.
Thank fuck, I was not joking
Is it the thing that's doing the verb? Then it's who. Otherwise whom.
It's always great to learn more. Next you can relearn colons.
"In modern English usage, a complete sentence precedes a colon, while a list, description, explanation, or definition follows it." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon_(punctuation)
Man, I wish universe had a longer run.
I think it’s more technically correct as “of whom are you afraid” as you should not end a sentence with a preposition.
Then again, I’m a software engineer so perhaps not.
I had hoped someone would give me this quote…
Ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I will not put!
It's fine to end a sentence with a prepositional or phrasal verb. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/end-sentence-preposition/
You can end a sentence in a preposition, and whom isn't a preposition anyway. It's a pronoun.
"Of her, I am afraid."
Great, now I'm sounds like Yoda.
English is my 2nd language and I learned a lot from this comment section. Thanks you guys.