To Whom It May Concern:

Let me help you with one of those heavy, difficult questions life offers up from time to time: one must use "who" when supplying the subject, "whom" when the object of a sentence. This is much easier to remember than switching out other pronouns (he/him, she/her, etc.) to see what fits.

SUBJECT? WHO.

• Who left this unicorn in my garden this morning?
• Who is responsible for letting the bats into my belfry?

OBJECT? WHOM.

• This tatty old sock belongs to whom?
• You need my spyglass to attend the opera with whom?

However, I must allow that this gets a little tricky sometimes, for often who/whom sentences are, by nature, arranged confusingly. This is when it becomes extra-important to understand what a subject is and what an object is. the subject acts, and the object is acted upon. It's less about where in the sentence the words are and more about what is happening in the sentence.

Some of us had, at some point in our academic careers, teachers who taught us to swap out the words who/whom with the words he/him (or she/her, if you will) within the sentence to find the appropriate usage. Personally, I feel that's still way more complicated than necessary and will lead to further confusion in the form of nonsensical sentences. If one needs a pencil and paper to practice one's queries upon before putting them to one's interrogee (okay, yes, I made that word up--sue me), then one will have wasted precious investigative time and energy.

Allow me to simplify. Look instead for the answer to the question. If the answer will be him/her, use whom; if it will be he/she, use who. Who? He. Whom? Him. For example:

• Who/m is going to cook the holiday turducken this year?

Obviously, the answer will be that HE shall cook the turducken and not that HIM will cook it. (Also, because turducken is such an abominable and blasphemous creation that SHE will certainly not deign to prepare it, but I digress.) Thus we find that the appropriate pronoun for this sentence is who.

Let's look at another example of the opposite inclination:

• Who/m would you like to receive your complimentary hand-knitted cat hair yarn purse?

The answer must be that I would like him or her to receive the craftastrophe in question, and thus we will use whom... by the grammar rules, that is. I just need a moment to decide whom it would most please me to drop that special delivery upon.

...and yes, such a thing really does exist, as do unicorns, bats, and turduckens.

A Word on Code-Switching

If you really want to get down and dirty on code-switching, you could check out the wikipedia entry. If, however, you aren't that into linguistics, read on.

Code-switching is moving back and forth between two languages or dialects (to grossly oversimplify). For example, some poor white and Black people converse in the common vernacular of their culture while with other members of it, and then switch to formal English when in school or professional settings (this is pretty much the kind of code-switching I'm referring to here). It's an important skill because it's crucial to full acceptance in both.

I learned about code-switching when I was studying psychology years ago, and it has informed my thinking and teaching about grammar ever since. What I once would have dismissed as ignorance, I now hesitate to make assumptions about. It's always possible that the people I hear using slangy class-marking vernacular are capable of exchanging it for "proper" English when necessary--and beyond this, it's possible that their use of colloquial language actually is a sign of intelligence rather than a proof against it.

We send cues with our speech to our listeners. We can make them feel accepted, judged, belittled, or safe, for example. Being able to code-switch can be vital when we need to fit in and be accepted, when we want to make and keep friends, and when we want to be taken seriously in our academic or professional pursuits. That's why I don't want to change the way you talk all of the time--I just want to help you with the rules when it matters.

I don't correct my friends' everyday speech or facebook posts or emails (unless I'm feeling ornery or insulted, LOL), so sometimes they are positively blown away when they invite me to edit a writing and I shred it end to end (insert Cheshire cat grin here, lots of sharp teeth). I don't care if you use who and whom correctly, if you pepper your posts with comma splices, or if you ever capitalize (hah! i don't) in common conversation.

However, if you really want to know what my grammarazzi-brain sees... pardon me while I sharpen my claws on this local newspaper. I'll be right with you.