I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss in September. It was very informative and highly amusing – at least for my easily-amused personality. I came out of it determined to beef up my hyphen and semi-colon use, as well as to reduce my ellipses use.

Now, I am currently going through When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People: How to Avoid Common Errors in English by Ann Batko.

I’ll post any other tidbits that I found helpful (as long as some from Truss’ book), but here’s one that I’m currently amazed by: The Who vs. Whom issue.

So many people pick and use the wrong word of the two. The book looks at Who is the present for? vs. Whom is the present for?

Without going into details and breaking down the sentence to talk about clauses, subjects and objects, etc. here’s a tip:

Think of how you would restate the sentence with the pronoun he/him or they/them, and if you use a form that ends in “m,” you need “whom.” For example, in this example, you’d say, Is the present for them? You wouldn’t say, Is the present for they.

So! Instead of incorrectly saying That’s the actor who Sally adores, you should be saying That’s the actor whom Sally adores. This is because Sally adores him and not he.

Right.