Who and Whom

Personal pronouns

A personal pronoun refers to a specific individual or individuals.

The following words are examples of personal pronouns:

you, he, she, it, they

change forms according to the way they are used within a sentence. They have separate forms to show that they are subjects

The part of the sentence that names the person, place, or thing the sentence is about. Subjects are usually nouns or pronouns.

The word firefighters is the subject of the following sentence:

Seven firefighters were injured in the apartment fire.

The simple subject is the subject noun alone: firefighters.

The complete subject is the subject noun and its modifiers: seven firefighters.

, predicate nominatives

A predicate nominative is a word, phrase, or clause that follows a linking verb and identifies or renames the subject.

In the following sentence, physicist is a predicate nominative.

Professor Stanley is a physicist.

, or objects

An object is a noun or pronoun that “receives” the action stated by a transitive verb or verbal, or that is linked to another word by a preceding preposition. The types of objects include direct objects, indirect objects, and objects of prepositions.

In the following sentence, the noun bus is the object of the verb took, and the noun Chicago is the object of the preposition to:

I took a bus to Chicago.

, and to show possession.

These pronoun forms are called cases

Cases are the forms that pronouns assume to indicate whether they are used as subjects or objects, or to indicate possession.

Use the subjective case when you use a pronoun as a subject. Use the objective case when you use a pronoun as an object.

The words who and whom are pronouns. Use who, the subjective case, as a subject. Use whom, the objective case, as an object.

Consider the following example:

I asked her who had signed the form.

In this example, who is the subject of the verb had signed.

Now consider this example:

That is the man whom the police arrested.

In this example, whom is the object of arrested.



In which sentence are pronoun cases used correctly? Who answered the phone? Whom answered the phone?

Yes. In this sentence, who is in the subjective case, because it is the subject of answered.

No. In this sentence, whom is not in the subjective case, though it is used as the subject of answered.

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