Whom watch #3 - Silly infographic

Continuing an occasional series where I look at silly or downright bad articles etc about whom on the Internet.

The other day I was looking through a teacher’s blog which had kindly linked to mine, when I came across an ‘infographic’ with the title “Who vs whom”. I rather feared the worst.

Read all about it

A look at the various uses of the pronoun it,
introductory (preparatory) it and there,
and it-clefts.

Pronouns and determiners - some, any, no, none, somebody, anybody, nobody etc

Practise using some, any, somebody, anybody etc, with these gapfull exercises. And also check out some related idioms and expressions.

The which-hunting season is upon us again.

A minor spat about the use of which and that in relative clauses

Which-hunting, a play on words on witch-hunting (see link below), is a term used by linguists to refer to the criticism by some of the use of which for things, in defining (aka restrictive or identifying) relative clauses.

To follow this discussion you need to know the difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses. If you need reminding, see my post here.

Q & A When do we use that instead of who or which?

Basic answer

The who, which and that the question refers to are all relative pronouns.

We can use that instead of who or which in defining (restrictive) relative clauses:

• For people:
• - The boy who is climbing the tree is my son.
• or The boy that is climbing the tree is my son.
• For things:
• - The car which is coming up the hill is my father's.
• or The car that is coming up the hill is my father's.

Note that I said can; you don't have to use that. If you are happier using who and which (which many learners are), by all means do. Just be aware that many native speakers will often use that.

Personal pronouns - subject or object? - A discussion.

In few areas can the divide between traditional grammar and actual usage be as wide as in the 'case' of personal pronouns. Here we take a look at why.

EFL course books and websites usually steer clear of language controversies, no doubt so as not to confuse students. But for me this is part of what makes grammar such a lively subject, and as you are advanced students, I think you can 'take it', so here goes.

Pronouns and determiners - an overview

Some words can be both pronouns and determiners, and in some other cases pronouns and determiners are closely related, so it seems to make sense to look at them together.

Reflexive, emphatic and reciprocal pronouns

A look at myself, yourself, each other etc. A little grammar, some exercises and a bit of a discussion.

A bit of this and that (and these and those)

This and that and their plurals these and those can be demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative determiners. This and that can also be adverbs, and that can also be a relative pronoun and a conjunction.

Perfect your understanding and use of these useful little words with these exercises

In praise of Singular they

After Somebody/someone/anybody/anyone, we often use the plural pronoun they instead of the rather cumbersome he or she. This usage happens even though somebody etc is singular, and is known as Singular they and includes them, their and themselves.

• If somebody wants more coffee they should just ask.

We also sometimes use singular they when we don't know the gender of the person we're talking about:

• If the next candidate is ready can you ask them to come in, please.

Or when we don't want to specify a gender, as what we are saying applies to both men and women:

• When dealing with a customer we want to try and exceed their expectations.

Do a couple of exercises on Singular they, and read why, for some strange reason, some people don't like it.

WhomWatch #1

Fairly recently I had a go at websites that make a big song and dance about people misusing apostrophes. But it's not only apostrophes, there are peevebloggers who moan about the 'misuse' or overuse of certain words (eg literally), the misuse of inverted commas (quotation marks) or the invasion of business buzzwords. And these websites are very popular. So in the spirit of 'Why should the devil have all the good tunes', I'm launching WhomWatch, an occasional blog within a blog.

Now I couldn't care less if people want to use the word whom in their conversation. If they want to sound a bit old-fashioned and slightly quaint, that's their business.

But I do object to so-called experts telling all and sundry that we must always use whom instead of who when it is the object of a clause. Why? Because in real life hardly anybody does. Here are some extracts from Swan, my usage bible:

Whom is not often used in informal English. We prefer to use who as an object, especially in questions. We use whom in a more formal style and we must use whom after prepositions.

And he gives these examples:

Who did they arrest? (Whom did they arrest? - formal)
Who did you go with? (With whom did you go? - very formal)

And I would add that in informal English (in other words, normal spoken English) we try and avoid the preposition problem by putting the preposition at the end of the sentence, as in his example - Who did you go with?. And we almost never use whom for a direct object (in other word without a preposition).

But that doesn't stop people telling us we should. Hence the need for WhomWatch, watching the prescriptivists. The name, by the way, is a reference to a popular 1970s British science-fiction TV series called Doomwatch, which used to scare the shit out of me. I hope WhomWatch will be a little less scary.

The do’s and don'ts of apostrophe use

No area of punctuation seems to give native speakers more problems than the apostrophe; a 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use it correctly. And no area of punctuation seems to cause people to get so hot under the collar at what they see as its ‘abuse’. There are even societies and websites devoted to to protecting it, and exposing the dastardly attacks on this fine and noble (but rather unimportant) little punctuation mark.

Some shops, such as Tescos, have just given up completely and consigned the apostrophe to the dustbin.

Yet the rules for using it are remarkably simple and (mainly) uncontroversial.

Nearly everything you want to know, and some things you probably don't want to hear, about apostrophes

• Contractions quiz
• Possessives quiz
• Possessive determiners and pronouns quiz
• Confusing words quiz
• Apostrophes quiz
• Annotated rant
• 2 Vocabulary quizzes
• Lots of links

It's a boy!

Transatlantic pronoun problems

I was writing some example sentences for my post on lay and lie, when I wrote this sentence:

She wrapped the baby up and laid it in its cot.

Then I remembered a post I'd read recently on the excellent language blog Separated by a common language. The blogger is an American linguist, who is currently working at a British university and writes about the differences between British and American English. And the penny has just dropped that Lynne Guist is not in fact her real name. What an idiot I am!

Anyway apparently it's quite normal for Brits to call very young babies it, as I had done there without even thinking, and Americans find this somewhat shocking. So, not wanting to offend anyone's sensibilities, I changed it to him and its to his.

Then for some light relief from 'lay and lie', which was involving quite a lot of work, I 'popped over' to 'Newsroom 101' to do a quiz or two, as you do. Newsroom 101 is not run by Associated Press, but has lots of quizzes based on Associated Press rules. I don't take them too seriously, but it's quite fun trying to guess how their minds work. Well, I came across these sentences:

Prescribers and describers - the strange case of the pedantic pronoun

Annotated article and 'singular they' quiz

Many famous newspapers and magazines have their own style guides, to make sure that there is some consistency in grammar and punctuation, and in how they refer to various aspects of the news. Some of them, such as the Economist, are freely available on the web.

However, many newspapers in the United States don't have their own guides, but use that of the Associated Press (AP). This makes the AP guide very influential, especially amongst journalists. There's a website, Newsroom 101, where you can do quizzes based on the AP rules, and I've been having fun doing some of them. The majority of AP rules are eminently sensible and in fact quite useful, but there are a few which I find quite weird, and which can result in language I find rather unnatural. Nonetheless, I'm sort of getting the hang of how they think.

I've also recently discovered a grammar and usage website called EnglishPlus, which seems to be mainly aimed at American college students and university entrants. If a bit spartan, the entries are refreshingly clear and most of them are completely uncontroversial. But in a few areas where there might be some room for debate, such as the use of object pronouns with the verb to be and the use of singular 'they' (see below), EnglishPlus doesn't even admit different ways of doing things might exist. They simply prescribe what is correct or incorrect, even if that leaves most of us speaking 'incorrect' English.

Playing around with pronouns, and a quiz