Directions: In each of the following sentences, black out one of the words in parenthesis. The sentence that remains should represent your natural expression of a thought.  Don't worry over your choice, don't ask anyone for help, and above all don't seek help in a grammar book. The sole reason for your choice should be that the sentence sounds right to you based on your experience with language. 

 Do the exercise now so that your choices will not be affected by the comments which follow the quiz.

            l. (Who, Whom) sent the letter? 2. (Who, Whom) did you want to see? 3. (Who, Whom) did the club elect president?  4. To (Who, Whom) did you write?  5. I do not remember (who, whom) I spoke to.  6. Two people (who, whom) I admire most are politicians.  7. He is a man (who, whom) everybody respects.  8. A boy (who, whom) the students called 'tiny' was six feet tall.  9. Give the money to (whoever, whomever) you like.  10. This is a prize for (whoever, whomever) gets the highest score. Extra credit: Should the title of this piece read: "To whomever is concerned"?

            Did you feel as you made your choices that you were doing a puzzle? That somewhere underneath it all someone was trying to trick you?  More important, did you feel you were making natural choices of words in the native language you have been speaking since you were a toddler?  Or did you feel you were running a hurdle race to avoid mistakes?

            If you chose "who" in all the sentences, except perhaps item 4, you agree with Theodore M. Bernstein, consulting editor of The New York Times , who thinks "whom" should be banished from use "except when it follows immediately after a preposition and sounds natural even to the masses." ("I Favor Whom's Doom," Times Magazine, 3/8/75, p. 111.) You also agree with Dwight MacDonald, author and critic, who thinks "whom" an "archaic frill" that should be excised from the language, and with William F. Buckley, Jr., Firing Line Inquisitor, who feels "who" should be used when it sounds right.

            If you chose "whom" for all sentences except items 1 and 10 (and you let the title stand as it is), you agree with Prof. Lionel Trilling of Columbia who thinks such confrontations with necessary choices "tend to build character."  You also have the support of Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, who believes that, though "there are cases when insistence on correct usage is stuffy and pedantic,... abolishing sin for the sinner (choosing incorrectly between "who" and "whom") superimposes that sin on the "virtuous."

            Thus run the arguments among prestigious scholars and users of our native tongue about how we should play the language game.  The battle has raged since the eighteenth century and it will probably continue. "I doubt," says Emeritus Prof. A.H. Marckwardt of Princeton, "that advocacy, in the form of a solemn pronouncement that "whom" is dead or should die, will have much effect one way or the other."

            There is a tendency for English speakers to use "who" when it appears at the beginning of a sentence or a clause because that's the subject's territory and "who" is a subject word.  That explains perhaps one's tendency to choose "who" in all the sentences in the quiz.  Even in item 4, a speaker would tend to say, "Who did you write to?" Thus avoiding the problem. In items 6 - 8, the sentences would be better expressed by omitting the choice altogether, and the problem would not exist.

            No matter how you fared on our little quiz, you will have to decide for yourself what road to follow.  But whether you play the game by ear for the inherent music of the language or by the rules of the grammar book, recognize what you are doing and be consistent.      

                        Bill Reynolds