Who or

Whom
17 de marzo 2023
 how to use it
Whom is used to refer to the object of a verb or
preposition. When in doubt, try this simple
trick: If you can replace the word with he or
she, use who. If you can replace it with him or
her, use whom.
Who should be used to refer to
the subject of a sentence.
Whom should be used to refer
to the object of a verb or
preposition.
when to use who
In a sentence, who is used as a subject.
Let’s look at a couple of examples:

Who would like to go on vacation?

Who made these awesome quesadillas?

 When to use
whom
Whom is used as the object of a verb or preposition.
Consider these examples:

To whom was the letter addressed?

Whom do you believe?

I do not know with whom I will go to the prom.

How to make it
easy

How can you tell when your pronoun is the object of a verb
or preposition? Try substituting the subjective-case
pronoun he, she, or they for who or whom And then try
substituting the objective-case pronoun him, her, or
them. If he, she, or they fits, you should use the
subjective option: who. If him, her, or them fits, you
should use the objective option: whom. Keep in mind that
you may have to temporarily rearrange the sentence a bit
while you test it.
 Examaple

#1
Who/whom ate my
sandwich? Try substituting she and her: She ate my
sandwich. Her ate my sandwich. Because
the pronoun is the subject of this
sentence, the subjective he sounds right

#2
Whom ate my sandwich? and herdoesn’t. That means the word you
want is the subjective who.
Who ate my sandwich?
Who/whom should I talk to about labeling
food in the refrigerator?

Before we can try substituting they and them here, we

need to notice something about this sentence: it’s
interrogative, meaning it’s a question, and as with many
interrogative sentences, the subject, I, doesn’t come at
the beginning but in the middle. Turning it into a
declarative sentence by moving the subject to the
beginning and making it a statement instead of a
question will make it easier to tell which pronoun case
sounds more natural: I should talk to they. I should talk
to them. The objective them sounds right, so the word you
need is the objective one
You can also use questions to determine when to use who
and when to use whom. Are you using the pronoun to talk
about someone who is doing something?

Who drives her mother’s car to school? Gina drives her

mother’s car to school.
Whom did Gina pick up in her mother’s car today? Gina
picked up Charlie in her mother’s car today.

In this case, we are not using the pronoun to refer to the

subject of the sentences, the person doing something
(Gina), but to refer to the person she is doing something
for: Charlie. In other words, Charlie is the direct object
of the verb pick up in the second sentence, so we know to
use the objective whom in the question.