Whose whom who is

Pronouns are words that take the place of a noun. Relative pronouns are used at the beginning of an adjective clause a dependent clause that modifies a noun. The three most common relative pronouns are who , which and that. Who has two other forms, the object form whom and the possessive form whose. That and which are used to start two different types of adjective clauses, called essential and non-essential clauses.

That always indicates a clause that is essential to the meaning of the sentence because it defines or identifies the noun it refers to. An essential clause does not take a comma before it. Which is used in a non-essential clause modifying an animal or a thing.

A non-essential clause is one that gives secondary, non-essential information about a noun that is already fully identified. A non-essential clause is separated from its noun with a comma:. The relative pronoun who may cause confusion because it has both a subject form who and an object form whom.

The key to choosing between these forms is to see what the pronoun is doing in its own clause. Use who if the pronoun is the subject of the verb in the dependent clause. Use whom if the pronoun is the object of the verb in the dependent clause.

Use whom if the pronoun is the object of a preposition in the dependent clause. Then replace that pronoun with who or whom , using the following rule:. Here is some insight about when and where to use these similar words. Both of these words are pronouns.

The trick to determining whether the context of a sentence calls for a who or a whom is to replace the word in question and see which fits correctly. If you can replace with he or she , the pronoun you should use is who. If you need to replace with him or her to make the sentence sound correct, then you should be using whom. In official grammatical terms, whom refers to the object of a verb or the object of a preposition.

Who is used when it refers to the subject of the sentence. Here are some sentence examples and the reasoning why the selected pronoun was used. Who took the last cookie? Examples: Whom are you going to invite? Whom did he blame for the accident? Whom did he hire to do the job? Examples: Whose camera is this? Whose dog is barking outside? Whose cell phone keeps ringing?

Examples: He doesn't know who the boss of the company is. I know the man who won the contest. Examples: We knew the actress who starred in the movie. Examples: Who did you come to the party with? Thus, in our sample sentence, in informal settings, you can write: The child whom the teacher paid the most attention to tended to succeed.

Or you could drop the whom : The child the teacher paid the most attention to made good grades. Thus: The child who-whom-whose homework the teacher graded first received an A. Here the verb graded is satisfied; it has its subject teacher and its object homework.

Thus, you must supply the possessive case whose : The child whose homework the teacher graded first received an A. Email Print. We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.

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