Ask the Recruiter

Q: Usually, I am up to the task of "who" or "whom" but sometimes it seems as if it is more of a "sounds right" rather than "is right."

I had a couple of designers working with me who/whom I loved and who/whom I am still very good friends with today.

Lucy

A: I see this pronoun in some of my mail. As in, "To Whom it May Concern."

Before we get to answers, a lecturette: We don't do grammar or punctuation by ear. We follow the rules. Know the rules; write with confidence.

On who and whom, the rule is that "who" is the subject form of this pronoun and "whom" is the object form.

The AP Stylebook's "Ask the Editor" blog says: "Who" is grammatically the subject -- never the object -- of a sentence or phrase: The woman who rented the room left the window open. Who is there? "Whom" is used when someone is the object of a verb or preposition: The woman to whom ...

Even if we know the rule, we can run into some tricky situations, as when it is hard to tell whether the pronoun is the object of a verb or part of a noun clause.

Whom seems to be on its way out, people say. But then, people have been saying that -- praying that -- for decades. It has become such a distraction that journalists seldom use it. We don't simply plug in who everywhere, we write sentences that don't require the objective form of that pronoun.

My guess on your sample sentence was whom in the first case and who in the second. Our chief of copy desks, Alex Cruden, agrees with whom in the first place, but says experts disagree on the second. The disagreement seems to have to do with whether the pronoun is the object of "with" or part of a noun phrase that is the subject. Get me rewrite!