'Who' is a subject, 'whom' is an object. Easy way to know when to use 'who' versus 'whom:' replace with 'he' or 'him;' if the former works, it's 'who' and if it's the latter it's 'whom.'

"For whom the bell tolls" becomes "For him the bell tolls" (makes sense) while "For he the bell tolls" makes no sense.

"She gave the letter to who?" is incorrectly "She gave the letter to he" whereas "She gave the letter to whom?" becomes "She gave the letter to him?"

And remember "a number" is plural, while "the number" is singular.

Anybody wanna share some more cool off-the-cuff grammar rules?

(A random post, I know. This journal has been devoid of posts of real value lately. Here is my contribution for the month of April).

Currently listening to: DJ Acura - Park Ji Yoon Megamix
Posted by roy on April 24, 2006 at 01:11 PM in Ramblings | 16 Comments

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Comment posted on April 27th, 2006 at 09:02 AM
Roy. Here is a sentence from an article in our newspaper today: "A 36-year-old woman whom police think robbed another womand at knifepoint was arrested early Wednesday morning at a Spokane motel." How do I apply your he/him formula to determine if "whom" was the correct word to use? I'm obviously confused.
Comment posted on April 25th, 2006 at 04:29 PM
My favorite one to catch people on is putting the period or comma inside the quote marks. Periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks. Other forms of punctuation (questions marks etc.) are placed inside or outside the quotation marks depending on whether they are part of the quote or not.
Comment posted on April 25th, 2006 at 02:33 AM
"A number" is plural? How does it works? Care to share?
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 11:15 PM
Hey... very useful piece of information. Looking forward to more such educational piece of entry :D
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 08:27 PM
many current grammarians are now saying that it is ok to split the infinitive and that it is ok to end a sentence in a preposition. they justify this by pointing to the fact that language is democratic, and thus the common and persistent incidence of these errors renders them no longer incorrect. while on principle i agree with these grammarians' conclusions, because language really is democratic, i am also a grammar lover/snob and so i will continue to keep my infinitives unsplit and i will continue to go to awkward lengths to keep my sentences from ending in prepositions.

andrew (guest)

Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 09:00 PM
i used to be right there with you...in fact, i still dislike it when people use the journalistic possessive in non-journalistic settings (e.g. james' vs. james's). nevertheless, i changed my attitudes a bit when i realized just how arbitrary the split infinitive and preposition rule is. it's based on the latin (see: romance languages). english grammar isn't based on latin -- these structures were superimposed by some english poet in the relatively recent past -- i think 17 or 1800s.

to NOT follow these rules is ok, especially now. something to chew ON :)
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 10:44 PM
andrew, your mom called mine.

congrats! where are you going to go?
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 09:35 PM
gah, i know, you are completely right. i think i remain stubborn as a stand against the pervasive lack of knowledge about proper grammar usage these days, even amongst "educated" people.

and yeah, it should be james's.
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 06:29 PM
HAHAHAHA :D love it :)

I always didn't understand why people couldn't get "there" vs. "their" vs. "they're" right...

or...
"its" or "it's"
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 05:28 PM
ESL!
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 04:37 PM
A couple rather unastounding rules, but they always tick me off:

Speaking of e.g.: e.g. is an abbreviation for <em>exempli gratia</em>, or "for the sake of example", and is thus used only when giving and example of something. <em>I.e.</em> stands for "id est", or "that is". I.e. is used to rephrase something.

Man I hate when people mix those up.

<em>US</em> or <em>U.S.</em> is an adjective for "pertaining to the USA"; when talking about the country, it is proper to use <em>USA</em> or <em>U.S.A.</em>.
Comment posted on April 25th, 2006 at 02:31 AM
Really? Which langauge are 'exempli gratia' and 'id est' came from?
Comment posted on April 25th, 2006 at 09:00 AM
latin
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 10:42 PM
i didn't know about the US/USA thing. i've always used US to refer to the country as well.

but i guess that would get very confusing.
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 02:00 PM
Here's one.

"Either Jeff and I/me will kick your ass." Ignore Jeff for a second. "I will kick your ass" works, whereas "Me will kick your ass" doesn't. When in doubt over 'I' or 'Me' in a sentence, omit the other subject[s]. Foolproof.

A step further. I see way too many people who say, "The dog sat between Jeff and I." Now, they think they're being grammatically sophisticated by saying 'Jeff and I,' but they're completely incorrect. How to make sure? Use the tip from above. Omit Jeff. "The dog sat between I." or "The dog sat between me?" The latter is correct.
Comment posted on April 24th, 2006 at 02:01 PM
[Sorry, it should read "Either Jeff OR I/me will kick your ass."

hehe.