My Opinion on Various Nitpicky Grammar Rules

Whom vs. Who

The who/whom debate is fairly straightforward. “Traditional” English grammar states that “who” is used for subjects, and “whom” for objects. What that means in practice is that the phrase “the girl who I love” should be “the girl whom I love” because “who” is the object of “love”, not the subject. Nouns changing form by their case (their grammatical role in a sentence) has been phased out of English grammar almost entirely, with the exception of pronouns; for instance, case is how we distinguish the “I”s from the “me”s, the “they”s from the “them”s, etc.

There is a far less debated, but related quandary over what form is appropriate for pronouns acting as predicate nominatives; that is, nouns coming off of a linking verb like “to be”, “to become”, or “to seem” describing the subject. For instance, “The shopkeeper is an elephant,” has “elephant” as the predicate nominative coming off “to be”. While such nouns are technically nominatives by nature (subjects are also nominatives by nature), when using pronouns, speakers are far more likely to use the accusative for predicate nominatives—for instance, answering the phone with “This is her!” instead of “This is she!”.

In modern spoken English, “whom” will most likely be left to rot. In formal settings, it still technically is the way to go when appropriate, although I anticipate it will soon become unnecessary. In specific instances, like “To whom it may concern”, I suspect it will remain with us longer.

I think “whom” could be made chic again. Its cons include that other relative pronouns (which, whose) do not change by case and that the rules around its use are difficult to remember for non-grammarians. However, it is whimsical-sounding and I like that we have an -m ending accusative in English, as a Latin scholar. That is my subjective opinion, however, and I am sympathetic to the “whom”-haters.

Not ending a sentence with a preposition

The basic idea with this one is that prepositions (words like “in”, “at”, “with”, and “above”), should always be placed next to the noun coming off them, and placing them at the end of the sentence alone is therefore incorrect. Its relevance is mostly in questions—“Which beach are you at?” should be made “At which beach are you?”—and relative clauses—“I wonder whom she went out with” should be made “I wonder with whom she went out”. This rule is nonsensical to me, and I hope my two examples have shown how awkward and pretentious-sounding its application can be. 

Unlike “whom”, not ending sentences with prepositions is not some old, used-to-be commonplace rule currently being made archaic. Rather, it was introduced into the language by grammar scholar Robert Lowth, who believed Latin was the supreme model of language, and English grammar should be remade to be more like Latin. At the time he was writing, this rule was in no way universal in informal or formal settings. Its sticking around is only due to the fame of Robert Lowth and the desire for a pretentious delineation between an enlightened, random, and proper English grammar and the normal way people speak and write. I am pro-ending sentences with prepositions.

No Vague Pronoun References

“My sister is a cat. This is very difficult for her.”

“Macbeth cannot know if the prophecies are accurate, which makes his choices his own.”

“Elizabeth loved Wickham. This went away after she realized his wicked deeds.”

The words I have highlighted in the above sentences are pronouns that do not have a specific antecedent, or noun that they are directly referring to or taking the place of. The last sentence could be made correct, for instance, by replacing “This” with “This feeling” or “This love”, making it clear what the subject of “went away” is supposed to be. I believe this rule is, while seeming common sense, unnecessary. 

Yes, in many instances, having an unclear pronoun can make your meaning unclear. For instance, the sentence “Mary did not know how to fix the leak, which caused the house to flood” suffers from this ambiguity. There are two possibilities here—Either the speaker means to state that the leak caused the house to flood, or that Mary’s lack of knowledge caused the house to flood. Although the meanings are similar, I do appreciate the desire for the speaker to make themselves more transparent here.

However, in all three of my initial examples, I believe that whoever is reading has a very clear idea of what idea the pronoun refers to, and forcing onto these sentences and other similar ones this need for a clear antecedent or noun is rubbish. It leads us into horrible and awkward constructions like “the fact that” or “the idea that”. It disallows us from using pronouns to convey complex ideas or previous clauses, limiting them to one noun which is meant to communicate all of those complex thoughts. All in all, my general opinion is that yes, it is a good idea to ensure that your pronouns have clear meanings. But no, it is not always necessary to provide an exact grammatical pathway to that meaning.