Who/Whom

Schenecker's mother had called police from Texas because she was unable to reach the 50-year-old woman, whom she said was depressed and had been complaining about her children.

For God’s sake, let Bi-Anne decide who she wants to be with.

The above two sentences are taken from newspapers in a tragic news item about a mother killing her teen boy and daughter for the first sentence and in a hot issue attracting different views from readers about a custody battle of a girl in a divorce case for the second one.

The ‘whom’ used in the first sentence should have been ‘who’ as this ‘who’ is the subject in the state of being depressed and doer of the action of complaining mentioned later in the sentence while "she said" is merely a parenthetical clause having no grammatical function.

‘Whom’ (in the objective case) can be used if the sentence is reworded as “Schenecker's mother had called police from Texas because she was unable to reach the 50-year-old woman, whom she described to be depressed and to have been complaining about her children.”

However, in the second sentence, the ‘who’ should be replaced by ‘whom’ being the objective noun governed by the preposition ‘with’.

For the correct use of such relative pronouns, please refer to the simple guide contained in my earlier posting of September 28, 2009, When to use who, whom.

Informal use of 'plus'

Enjoy 20% savings on buffet lunch or dinner plus get a complimentary plate of Yee Sang worth RM40 with our Credit Card.

I have seen the above advertising message in a newspaper, and I have brought it up here because I have noticed a non-standard usage of the ‘plus’.

‘Plus’ is normally used as a noun or a preposition or an adjective. In the above case, it is used as a conjunction which is regarded as informal.

The sentence can be improved with just a slight change as “Enjoy 20% savings on buffet lunch or dinner plus a complimentary plate of Yee Sang worth RM40 with our Credit Card” (that is deleting the word ‘get’ and then ‘plus’ will become a preposition) or “Enjoy 20% savings on buffet lunch or dinner and get a complimentary plate of Yee Sang worth RM40 with our Credit Card” (that is replacing ‘plus’ with ‘and’ which is a proper conjunction).