It’s an interesting mistake, I’ll say that. It’s as if people thought that the nominative pronouns were more formal—as if English had separate forms for “I” and “me” the way Italian and French and German have separate forms of “you” for familiar and formal. “I” is not a formal version of “me.” “Me” does sound more intimate somehow—maybe it’s this confidential air that someone speaking in public wants to avoid. “I,” “he,” “she,” “we,” “they” are stiffer than their counterparts in the objective case. “Me,” “him,” “her,” “us,” “them” are softer, more malleable; they go in places more easily. Maybe it’s something to do with being objects, borne along, instead of bold subjects, which take responsibility for their actions. Maybe it would help if people practiced, like singers vocalizing: Between you and mi-mi-mi-mi-mi.
If you prefer an automotive explanation, try this: The head gasket, as I understand it, is a kind of seal, keeping the oil that lubricates the engine out of the car part (carburetor? crankcase? How about solenoid?) where the fuel mixes with oxygen in just the right proportions to fire the pistons that keep the motor running and the car on the road. The pronouns are the grease. The verbs are the gasoline and the nouns are the air. The case system is the gasket that keeps everything running smoothly. You notice it only when someone blows it. And if that doesn’t work for you, just put the key in the ignition and turn it.
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Once you know about the nominative and the accusative cases, and have a firm grasp on the copulative verb, another frequent usage issue becomes as easy as a glide in a gondola: the distinction between “who” and “whom.” This one troubles many of us, though there are some who think it’s not worth worrying about at all. “The who/whom distinction,” Steven Pinker writes, “is on the way out; in the United States, whom is used consistently only by careful writers and pretentious speakers.” I don’t think anyone would argue with that. David Marsh, the style editor of the Guardian, titled his usage book For Who the Bell Tolls; the cover illustration shows the m being rubbed out of John Donne’s famous line. “Whom” may indeed be on the way out, but so is Venice, and we still like to go there.
Is there ever a time when “whom” is right, outside of “For whom the bell tolls”? And how does it work when it’s right? “For whom the bell tolls” is a direct object in the poem: “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls.” It answers the question “what?” Never send to know what? But in this case “whom” is simply the object of the preposition “for”: the bell tolls for whom? Those are five of the most loaded words in the English language.
“Who” is used when the pronoun is the subject or a predicate nominative, and “whom” when it’s a direct object, an indirect object, or the object of a preposition. There is one snag: Sometimes an object is not just a noun but a clause, which is like a sentence within the sentence, and has a subject, verb, and object of its own. When that happens, don’t panic. Ship your oars for a moment and drift until you figure it out.
Here is a prosaic example of a construction that came close to going to press with “who”: “the dissident blogger, whom the government had recently allowed to travel outside of the country.” If you recast the clause as its own sentence and change the relative pronoun to a personal pronoun, its case will be apparent. The government had recently allowed her (objective) to travel outside of the country.
And here is a “whom” that should have been a “who,” from C&T (Car & Travel), the magazine I get in the mail from AAA, the automobile association: “If someone approaches you waving a big pair of greasy jumper cables, tell him that you’ve contacted your roadside service provider and the police, whom will be there shortly.” Who will be there shortly? The police will be there shortly. The police is the subject of the clause, so the relative pronoun stays in the nominative.
Cyberspace is awash in “whom”s that should be “who”s, and many of them are negligible—you look at them once, wince, and it’s over—but others linger, because the sentences they are embedded in are otherwise delightful, and you’d like to see them enjoying their instant on your Facebook feed. I know that my friend Little Annie Bandez will forgive me for using as examples some of the heartfelt wise-ass things she has posted. Annie wrote, “In this bright fall light the damage humans be wearing is so in your face that its near impossible to not love—even those whom are screaming for a bitch slap.”
Annie is right to think that the object of her love should logically be in the objective case and that the objective of “who” is “whom”; however, she has cast the object not as a simple pronoun (there is an implied “them” following “impossible not to love”) but as a hilariously provocative clause: “those [humans]” is the subject and “are screaming” is the verb and “for a bitch slap” is a prepositional phrase describing what they are screaming for. Because “those humans” are doing the screaming, they are the subject of the clause, and the pronoun should be in the nominative, even though the humans in need of slapping are filling the role of the sentence’s object. Ask yourself, who is screaming for a bitch slap? The answer is “they” are, the nominative pronoun, so “who” should be in the nominative case.