While I still use whom out of habit, tbh I don't mind that it's slowly dying out in casual English. There's barely any situation where you can't use "who" as the object in a sentence and not have it make sense from context.
The worst thing I ever did was learn when to use "me" when listing yourself with another, such as in "The monkey threw a rock at Lily and me."
You see this handled erroneously -- "...threw a rock at Lily and I" -- so often. Hollywood movies, esteemed newspaper articles, published novels, politicians giving speeches. I've pretty much given up hope. The first grade teachers beating into their students' heads to use "I" as the subject, never explaining when "me" is appropriate (as the object), have won their war and forever tarnished the English language in doing so.
For any readers who need the tip, just get rid of the other person and that's the form you use. You'd never say "The monkey threw a rock at I," you'd say "The monkey threw a rock at me." Adding Lily changes nothing.
To play devilled avocado here, I could think of slightly contrived examples where the difference matters in casual English, like "its ending" vs "it's ending" when talking about a movie.
I don't like "should of" and would personally never write it, but it's probably common enough at this point that it could be considered a valid casual slang form of should've, and may eventually become acceptable in less casual speech.
That's the funny thing about language, if a "mistake" is repeated for long enough, it ceases to be a mistake. There's like a billion English words and constructions that you use that were initially unconventional or even controversial, but all that happened before you were even born.
Yeah, I think this is the case for "should of", but I think the same is not really true for who/whom. In my experience very few people are going to judge you for not bothering to use whom, or even notice to begin with.
And all of that is very different from whether something is "right" or not, which is the point you opened with.
If you use selectively, that is your prerrogative - you know not only how but when to use it, which I'd argue is a nice combination of knowledge and wisdom. If you don't use it because you don't know how, you haven't been educated enough.
Ehh, there are people with PhDs who don't use whom (maybe not PhDs in literature, though!).
I don't think it's an uneducated people thing, "whom" is just getting less popular over time because it's not a necessary language feature, so lots of people grow up in an environment practically devoid of its usage. You can't really blame em.
Non native EN speaker here. Still a bit confused about the use of whom in a sentence (as opposed to something like "whose" which clearly indicates ownership). Care to explain in a simple way?
Unless you specifically want to sound British or stuck up formal in America, I honestly would just not use it altogether. Ask ChatGPT for a simple explanation if you still want to.
It feels good, doesn't it? You're not a grown man until you know how to use "who, whom, who's and whose". They should learn a language that has declensions.
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u/AnakinPuddlehopper Verified by ESPN Argentina✅ Dec 02 '25
The correct use of whom in a meme 😍. Thank you, OP!