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Pronouns

Pronoun types

Personal pronouns

Possessive personal pronouns

Questioning pronouns

Indefinite pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns

Reflexive pronouns

Intensive pronouns

Pronouns and antecedents

Avoiding confusing antecedent and pronoun situations

Consistent use of the pronoun it

Pronouns - singular or plural

The difference between who and whom

Pronoun consistency

First person

Second person

Third person

All third person

All first person

All third person

All second person

The difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’

Who and whom are both pronouns. ‘Who’ is a subjective pronoun, but ‘whom’ is an objective pronoun. What’s the difference? Have a look at these two sentences:

I am not sure who is doing the speech.

In this sentence we use the subjective pronoun ‘who’, because it is not being acted on by any verbs.

I am not sure whom we can give the speech to.

In this sentence however, we need to use the objective pronoun, because the person we’re talking about is having something done to them - a speech is being given to them. This makes them an object of an action, and so we need the objective pronoun.

When you’re not sure whether to use ‘who’ or ‘whom’, try replacing it with he/she/they and him/her/them. If it makes sense with he/she/they, then use ‘who’. But if it makes sense with him/her/them, then use ‘whom’. Sometimes you may have to rewrite the sentence a bit to do the replacing. Let’s try the two sentences we’ve just looked at:

I am not sure ___ is doing the speech.

I am not sure he is doing the speech.
I am not sure him is doing the speech.

Since ‘he’ sounds much better, we need to use ‘who’. Now, here’s the second sentence:

I am not sure ___ we can give the speech to.

This one’s a bit trickier, because if we just blindly put ‘he’ and ‘him’ into the sentence it doesn’t make any sense at all:

What you need to do is think about where the ‘he’ or ‘him’ might make more sense. In this case, try putting them at the end of the sentence instead:

I am not sure we can give the speech to he.
I am not sure we can give the speech to him.

Bingo! The ‘he’ doesn’t make sense, but the ‘him’ does. So we need to use ‘whom’.

Now, if you’re getting really exotic with your writing and you’re using the words ‘whoever’ and ‘whomever’, the same rules apply. ‘Whoever’ is a subjective pronoun, but ‘whomever’ is an objective pronoun.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Pronoun consistency