For whom the usage rankles
There are some linguistic lost causes that I mourn nonetheless. One is the chronic misuse of hopefully, which means full of hope. Another is the use of “whom”. Most people avoid the issue by avoiding the word. More and more I think this is what the end result will be. It saddens me, though. I like “whom” and wish it would be used more and used correctly.
I’m not necessarily one to talk, though. I knew that whom should be used an an indirect object after a preposition, e.g., Ask not for whom the bell tolls…. Who is to replace subjects and direct objects, e.g., Who’s on first? I was writing a letter recently, though, to someone whose intellect impresses me. I was trying to make a point, and didn’t want my point to be obscured by bad usage. I had a few sentences that were demanding that I choose between who and whom and I had to make my best guess because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what part of speech they were. I was tired and I couldn’t lay hands on my copy of Chicago Manual of Style. It wasn’t near the other writing books like it should have been. Instead, after our move and in the absence of a formal filing system, I found it later wedged between The Mad Scientist’s Club and The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (But of course. What was I thinking, not looking there?)
It wouldn’t have helped me, though. It has no entry on who/m. Instead I had to turn to little Strunk and White, (which, as I write this, I can no longer find. GRRRR.) Even if I could quote it, it wouldn’t help. It had a slight entry that did not illuminate. Instead it forced me to come up with my own rule. If you can substitute s/he then use who, if you would use her/him, use whom. Sometimes you need to flip the words around. For example, Who is the actor whom you despise?
Sadly, I think, it may be easier to leave out whom than to wrestle so with its use.
January 14th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
A searchable Strunk can be found online at: http://www.bartleby.com/141/, so go knock yourself out!
January 15th, 2005 at 8:49 am
Hey Vince, thanks for the info. As Girldetective’s tech support, I thought I’d mention that some of the comments get held for moderation, because we get a lot of spam comments. I noticed that you tried to post the same comment a couple of times, so I let the first one through and ditched the rest. Actually, I’m not sure which rule you violated that caused your comment to be held.
January 15th, 2005 at 8:50 am
I think my rules got to hard in there somewhere. My own post got held for moderation. Hmmm.
Yup. I had inadvertantly created a rule that matched every comment. Now that I’ve gotten rid of that, I’m sure we’ll see more spam. If anyone notices spam comments that have made it through, feel free to let me know.
ggrod (at) girldetective (dot) net
January 15th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Yeah, about the third time I hit the “say it” button, I remembered the early posts about the comment policy to avoid spam. They were all the same. Blame it on instant gratification!