Do you remember Johnnie Cochran, the powerful lawyer who lead OJ Simpson’s defense team? He was good, really good. And he used good grammar.

One of his more powerful statements, actually a rhetorical question to the jury, was, “Who is kidding whom?” I admit to cheering when I heard him say that.

“Whom” is starting to drop out of the English language, I suspect, because many people don’t know what it means or how to use it. Those who do are sometimes considered snooty by those who don’t, like wearing a suit and tie to a ball game might be considered snooty by those who are dressed in shorts. Using “whom” isn’t snooty; it’s correct. Let’s look at “who” and “whom,” what they mean, and how they are used.

1. Using “Who”

“Who” is a subject pronoun. This means that “who” does something. “Who” has an action and is followed by a verb.”. One way to check whether or not “who” is the right word is to replace it (temporarily) with the word “He” or “She,” which are also subject pronouns.

Examples:

“There is the man who stole my cookie!” (“Who” is the subject of “stole”; “he stole.”)

“Who wants to buy me another cookie?” (“Who” is the subject of “wants”; “he wants.”)

2. Using “Whom”

“Whom” is an object pronoun. This means that “Whom” is the recipient of an action or completes a prepositional phrase. One way to check whether or not “whom” is the right word is to replace it (temporarily) with the word “him” or “her,” which are also object pronouns.

Examples:

“Officer, my cookie was stolen, but I don’t know by whom.” (“Whom” is the object of the preposition “by”; “by him.”)

“I’m looking for the cookie thief whom you didn’t see.” (“Whom is the object of “you didn’t see”; “you didn’t see him.”)

3. Where this gets tricky

The “who/whom” can start a clause that serves as an object. For example, consider this sentence: “I gave my cookie to the man who/whom wore a red tie.” “The man who/whom wore a red tie” is an object of “to.” So which do you choose? Actually the answer is pretty simple. Find the verbs in the sentence first, and then locate their subjects. The subject of the verb “wore” is “who/whom.” Because we need a subject here, we use the subject pronoun “Who.” Thus, we have “I gave my cookie to the man who wore a red tie.”

Another way to decide is to identify the clauses in a sentence. This sentence has the clause “I gave my cookie to the man” and “Who wore a red tie.” The first clause has the subject-verb combination of “I gave,” and the second has the subject-verb combination “who wore.” Again, we see that “Who” is the subject of the clause, so we need the subject pronoun. This also gets tricky when the Subject-verb-object order is disrupted, such as when revising sentences so they don’t end in prepositions. For example, consider this sentence: “To whom shall I give my cookie?” “Whom” seems to be in the subject position as the subject of “shall.” However, “whom” is the object of the preposition “to.” Another way to write this sentence (poorly) is “I shall give my cookie to whom?” Now, the selection of “who” and “whom” seems pretty obvious.

On the other hand, in the sentence “Who shall buy my cookie?” “who” is serving as the subject of “shall buy,” which is why we use “who” and not “whom.” In this sentence, as in the previous examples, finding the verbs will help you decide which to use.

4. Quick summary

Who: Subject, can be replaced by other subject pronouns, such as “he” and “her”

Whom: Object, can be replaced by other object pronouns, such as “him” and “her”

5. One final note

We sometimes get questions about “whomever” and “whoever.” These two words follow the same rules as “who” and “whom.” You can correctly write, “Whoever has the cookie can give it to whomever he chooses.” “Whoever” is the subject of “has,” and “whomever” is the object of “chooses” (as in, “he chooses whomever”).

David Bowman is the Owner and Chief Editor of Precise Edit, a comprehensive editing, proofreading, and document analysis service for authors, students, and businesses. Precise Edit also offers a variety of other services, such as translation, transcription, and website development. Click here for more information about Precise Edit’s services

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Working With Pronouns

For the most part, you can think of pronouns as the general, non-specific nouns used to replace proper nouns in the English language. For example, “John” is the name of a man, but you can use “him” or “his” as a replacement pronoun. The sentence, “John went to John’s house,” seems clunky – but you can improve it by replacing John’s name with a pronoun. The sentence, “John went to his house,” is a lot easier to read. Pronouns can be very useful, but you do need to make sure that your sentences are clear in terms of who you are talking about.

Possessive Pronouns

Unlike many other languages, the English language uses pronouns to describe ownership. For example, if Jane and Bob own a home, they might say, “this is our home”. Or, if you own a watch, you might say, “This is my watch”. On the other hand, if someone else is trying to explain who the watch belongs to, they might say “The watch belongs to him.” As you can see, this is very different from other languages, where prepositions are often used in order to delineate ownership.

Using Pronouns to Create Variation

When reading, if you see someone’s name in one sentence and then again in the next sentence, you’ll start to feel bored with what you’re reading.

Consider how you feel when reading the following pair of sentences: “Paul was mowing the lawn. Paul moved the lawn mower aside to avoid a rock”. Boring, right? In this case, the use of pronouns to replace Paul’s name gives the author more freedom of expression, creating a more enjoyable text.

In some cases, constant repetition of a name can actually be construed as sarcasm or aggression. You’ll need to take into consideration the age of the person speaking, as well as the tone of voice and the situation. On the other hand, the following pair of sentences is more likely to hold your attention, and conveys a less aggressive meaning: “Paul was mowing the lawn. He moved the lawn mower aside to avoid a rock”.

Preventing Confusion When Using Pronouns

In some cases, you may be discussing two people in a sentence that need to be distinguished by their names in order to prevent confusion. Consider the following pair of sentences: “Jessica and Laura went to Wal-Mart. While she was there, she found a beautiful violet plant.” As you can see, it’s impossible to tell which woman found the violet plant. In order to fix this, you’ll have to repeat one of the names in order to clarify the discovery. Therefore, you might change the second sentence to read: “While Jessica was there, she found a beautiful violet plant”. It’s important to note that you don’t need to repeat information about the store, since both women went to the same location.

As with any other part of a language, there are specific times and places when it’s appropriate to use pronouns. Because they are not specific nouns, your sentences can become confusing if you aren’t clear about which noun you’re replacing. That said, it’s also important to try and avoid repetition of nouns, as this can be interpreted in a number of unflattering ways.

At http://1-language.com, there are several articles to help people learn English as well as a free online English course.

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Recognizing the Four Major Parts of Speech

In grammar there are eight parts of speech which break down into four major parts and four minor parts. A part of speech is a category assigned to a word or a phrase. The four main parts of speech are noun, adjective, adverb and verb. In English, a word can be more than one part of speech depending on how it is used.

A noun is a word that is used to name a person (Nicolas), place (Guatemala), thing (television), quality (beauty), action (flight,) or idea (mercy). There are several different kinds of nouns including proper nouns, common nouns and abstract nouns. Proper nouns are used to name specific people, places or things and are capitalized. Dawn Williams, Dawson City and Golden Gate Bridge are all examples of proper nouns. Common nouns refer to all nouns that are not proper and they are not capitalized. Abstract nouns name ideas, qualities and other intangibles. Some of these include words such as fear, happiness and honesty.

Adjectives are words that describe, modify or qualify a noun or a pronoun. An adjective tells us how many, what kind, or which one. In the following sentences, the italicized words are examples of adjectives.

“Jordan gave his mother the silver bracelet for her birthday.” (What kind?)

“There were thirty coats for sale in her shop.” (How many?)

“Out of the sisters, Sarah was the older one.” (Which one?)

Adjectives can also change form by adding -er or -est to the end of if they are preceded by “more” or “most”. The easiest way to find an adjective is to find the word that describes the noun. Articles are considered to be adjectives as well. There are two different kinds of articles and they are: definite (the) and indefinite (a, an).

Verbs are words that describe an action (walk, jump, think) or a state of being (become, is, seem). A complete verb is made up of the main verb as well as any helping verbs that may or may not be used with it. The most commonly used helping verbs are called the nine models which are could, should, would, might, may, shall, will, must and can. These models express how the writer feels about the verb. They give the verb a sense of urgency or obligation. Every verb has five forms which include; base form (walk), past tense (walked), past participle (I have walked), present tense (he/she/it walks) and present participle (I am walking).

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives or another adverb. To find out which words in a sentence are adverbs, ask yourself when, where, how, why, under what circumstances and to what extent, as the answers to all of these questions are in fact adverbs. The italicized words in the following sentences are all adverbs.

“She walked near her house.” (Where?)

“She walked yesterday morning.” (When?)

“She walked carefully.” (How?)

“She walked because she needed to get to work.” (Why?)

“She walked while feeling sad.” (Under what circumstances?)

“She walked quite carefully through the snow.” (To what extent?)

Another way to recognize an adverb is to look for words that end with the suffix -LY. Most of these adverbs are created by ending -LY to the end of an adjective. Some examples of this are slowly (slow), aggressively (aggressive) and hopelessly (hopeless).

The four major parts of speech are found in any good writing. Learning to use them correctly is the best way to ensure that you´ll understand them when you come across each part as you read or write.

It is also used before nouns that introduce something or someone you have not mentioned before. For example,
“I read a book this morning.”

A and an are also used when talking about your profession. For example:
“I am a network engineer.”

Using a or an depends on the sound that begins the next word.

We use a when the noun we referring to begins with a consonant (b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y or z), for example, a keyboard; a mouse; a laptop; a flower; a pencil.

We use an when the noun we referring to begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), for example, an orange; an egg; an engineer; an one-way street.

We use a also when the noun we referring to begins with a consonant sound: a university; a united team; a uniform.

In the same case, we also use an when the noun we referring to begins with a vowel sound. For example, an hour, an honest man.