Monday, May 9, 2011

The ever-confusing "Who/Whom"

So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.'

The above sentence is taken from an e-mail which I have received recently.

Here, the 'who' appears to be inappropriate. It should represent the people you may have injured and 'injured' is a transitive verb that takes an object.

As the relative pronoun 'who' (in the subjective case) should be in the objective case, the sentence should have been: So you say to people whom you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.'

The clause 'you think' is a parenthetical clause/parenthesis which can be set off by commas and it has no grammatical relations in the sentence.

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