Try substituting “she” and “her”: She ate my sandwich. Her ate my sandwich. “She” works and “her” doesn’t. That means the word you want is who.
No, the subject of the sentence ( car) is not performing the action. Use whom in your question.
Who is a pronoun, which means that it's used instead of a noun or noun phrase to refer to a noun/noun phrase that has already been mentioned or that does not need to be named specifically. Whom replaces who in spots where that word would receive the action of the verb or complete the meaning of a preposition.
Here's the basic difference: Who performs the action of a verb (e.g. “ Who sent us this gift?“), while whom receives the action (“We got this gift from whom ?“). In grammar terms, that makes who a subject, and whom an object. When following a preposition, whom is the preferred choice (“ To whom should we address our thank you note?“).
An object, in grammatical terms, is a noun or noun equivalent (such as a pronoun, gerund, or clause) that receives the action of a verb or that completes the meaning of a preposition— so, for example, sandwich in "They bought a sandwich"; it in "My dog ate it"; apologizing in "an appropriate time for apologizing"; and that it was true in "I was afraid that it was true."
Who and whom also frequently function as relative pronouns, which means that they refer to a noun or noun phrase that was mentioned earlier: The person who told my dog about the sandwich was unhelpful. The sandwich's owner, who my dog apologized to, requires a replacement sandwich.
When to Use 'Whom'. Whom is both simple and complicated. It is simple in that it is simply the objective case of who, which means that it's the form of who that is in the object position in a sentence. The pair of words is analogous to they and them: just as we'd say (forgetting the lack of clarity) "They helped them," we'd say "Who helped whom.".
One can communicate quite effectively in English—that is, make oneself understood accurately—entirely without whom. But we suspect that for a number of you that is not enough. We are quite certain, in fact, that some of you like whom very much and want to know how to use it correctly. This article is for YOU.
After all that, surely no one can claim that keeping who and whom in their prescribed places is easy to do. In fact, it's about as easy as keeping a dog from eating an unguarded, and ostensibly abandoned, sandwich.
If "whom" is used for the objective case, "who" is used for the subjective case —when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, or the person creating the action. Take the sentence: Who is at the door? The pronoun "who" is the subject of the sentence.
Grace Fleming, M.Ed., is a senior academic advisor at Georgia Southern University, where she helps students improve their academic performance and develop good study skills. Knowing when to use "whom" versus "who" can be difficult for even the most careful writers and speakers.
The pronoun "him" is clearly better. Therefore, the correct word in the sentence above will be "whom." Remember this simple trick, and you'll always know when to use "whom" and when to use "who."
The sentence may sound pretentious, even snobbish. But it is correct because "whom" is the subject of the infinitive "to," as well as the object of the sentence as a whole. Turn the sentence around so that the object is at the end:
In the following sentences, "who" is correctly used in the subjective case. You can check this by replacing the pronoun "who" with another subjective pronoun, such as "she," "he," or "you," for example:
The pronoun "who" is the subject of the sentence. Check this by replacing "who" with a subjective pronoun, swapping in "she" or "he" for "who," as in: She is at the door. He is at the door. "Who" is always used as the subject of a sentence or clause, and "whom" is always used as an object.
Deciding between who and whom can be challenging, even for people who consider themselves well-versed in the English language. Native speakers often say the word “who” when they should be saying “whom.” Because so many people get this particular grammar rule wrong in everyday speech, it’s worth investing extra time and energy to learn proper usage. You won’t regret it! By taking the time to learn the difference between “who” and “whom,” you’ll become a stronger writer. Especially in formal writing, it’s easy to make a bad impression by using the word “whom” incorrectly.
To recap, you should use the words “whom” and “whomever,” on the occasions when you need an objective pronoun. These words work well as the objects of phrases (like prepositional phrases) or the objects of sentences.
This time, you would use both the objective case and the subjective case. I trust him . He completes the assignment. For that reason, you’d choose “whoever.” I trust whoever completes the assignment.
That’s quite common. Often, in order to replace the word, you’ll need to restate the phrase so that the subject and verb come first, followed by the object. When who/whom appears as an interrogative pronoun, try answering the question as a way of rephrasing the sentence with a subject-verb-object construction.
See if you can substitute the mystery word for either “he” or “him.”. When you can replace the word with “him,” you should use “whom,” another objective pronoun. When “he” fits, you should use “who,” another subjective pronoun.
For prepositional phrases, you’ll always choose “whom” because you need the mystery word to act as the object of the prepositional phrase.
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Whom is often confused with who. Who is a subjective-case pronoun, meaning it functions as a subject in a sentence, and whom is an objective-case pronoun, meaning it functions as an object in a sentence.
Who, like I, he, she, we, and they, is used as the subject of a sentence. That means it performs actions.
When in doubt, substitute him (sometimes you’ll have to rephrase the sentence) and see if that sounds right. If him is OK, then whom is OK. If the more natural substitute is he, then go with who. For example: You talked to who/whom? It would be incorrect to say, “You talked to he?”, but saying, “You talked to him?” makes grammatical sense. So you would ask, “You talked to whom?”