Who versus whom: keep the relationship together.
By Adam Frick · Illustrated draftWho receives the draft?
A colleague can work with you or receive a draft from you. The relationship changes when the preposition changes. For that reason, I like keeping the preposition beside “whom”: the complete pair puts the relationship where you can inspect the relationship. Does the result sound more formal? Often, yes, and that change of tone belongs in the editing decision.
See the supporting references.Read the whole relationship.
Keep the pair together.
Constructed teaching exampleDo you know who those are for?
Do you know for whom those are?
Check the grammatical role.
Constructed teaching exampleWho contacted the editor?
Whom did the editor contact?
Keep the relationship visible.
Constructed teaching exampleThe colleague with whom I worked approved the draft.
The colleague to whom I sent the draft approved the changes.
See the published wording.
Accountability is between a duty holder and a person or organisation to whom a duty is owed
Would you say the same words over coffee?
I favour the complete pair in the shared written English I teach. In conversation, the same construction may sound unnecessarily formal, and Cambridge recognises less formal alternatives. A final preposition is not inherently wrong. My concern about omitted or confused pairings comes from teaching, not a measurement showing that everyone communicates better with “whom”.
References and evidence
- WHO, “The right to get responses to human rights violations”, 30 September 2022 ↩
- Cambridge Dictionary ↩
- Cambridge’s discussion of relative clauses ↩
Read the evidence and its limits.
The first question asks for the subject of “contacted”. The second asks for the object, while “the editor” supplies the subject. Cambridge Dictionary[2] defines “whom” through that object role, including objects of prepositions. An embedded clause needs the same care: “Who do you think will attend?” retains “who” because the person is the subject of “will attend”. Proximity to another verb does not automatically make a pronoun an object.
Ordinary English often uses “who” in object positions, and a final preposition is not inherently ungrammatical. Cambridge’s discussion of relative clauses[3] recognises that usage and associates the fronted preposition with formality. My recommendation asks a different question: which pattern should we teach when explicit relationships are the priority? I favour a consistent pairing that a writer can recognise and check, while acknowledging that the result may sound more formal.