"To who", or "To whom"? 5

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

A website I'm working on has a box where you can send a message to one or more recipients, and add data about a location and topics.

We currently have 4 fields with these labels:

"What do you want to say?" (the message)
"about where... " (the location)
"about what..." (the topic)
"to who..." (the recipients).

In this situation, is the use of "To who" correct, or should it be "To whom"... or perhaps neither of the two?

Thanks!

Dan





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[SkipVought]

Who is on first! ;-)

Skip,
^{Don't let the Diatribe...
talk you to death!}
_{Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE!}

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

I didn't think I needed to specify 'non cryptic answers only please', but I guess I do:

Non-cryptic answers only, please.



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[BillyRayPreachersSon]

I reckon I'll run with 'To who' - as from what I can see, the recipients would be the subjects, and so I think 'who' is correct.



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[CajunCenturion]

To whom is correct.

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[p5wizard]

But I would just title the field simply

"to..."



HTH,

p5wizard

 

[KenCunningham]

For the attention of?

Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks - make sure most are the former.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

Here's a quick mnemonic:

Reword the sentence to replace the occurrence of who(m) with either him/them or he/they*.

If you would replace it with a pronoun ending with "M", then use whom (which, conveniently, also ends with "M").

In this case, you could reword the sentence as, "Do you want to send the email to him/them?" So you'd use "whom" in the question form.

If, with a different sentence, you would use he or they, then you would use "who" when phrased as a question.

* Now's not the time to be politically correct and say "her," because that won't help very much with the mnemonic.

[tt][blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

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[traingamer]

As already noted, to whom is the correct usage, but you might just want to use recipient(s).

Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

That's interesting... the references I've been reading seem to suggest that if you're talking about the subject, you use 'who'.

Based upon that, I'd have thought that 'To John, Jane, Fred' would be subjects, and so the label would say 'To who' (as the next thing you do is click John, Jane, Fred).

Have I just got my logic head-over-heels?



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[SantaMufasa]

I'd have thought that 'To John, Jane, Fred' would be subjects...

"To" (unless signalling an infinitive form of a verb, e.g., "to be", "to go", "to eat", et cetera) is typically a preposition. As with other prepositional uses, there is typically an object of the preposition, in this case, whom...Notice it is not a SUBJECT of the preposition.


The subjective/nominative sense is who...the objective sense is whom. Bottom line: when acting in a subjective/nominative sense, use "who"; when acting in the objective sense, use "whom".

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]
“Beware of those that seek to protect you from harm or risk. The cost will be your freedoms and your liberty.”

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Santa,

I have to confess, I didn't understand a great deal of your response!

If it helps clear things up, the field on the form looks look like this:

to who: +------------------------------+-+
        | [x] Fred Smith               |^|
        | [ ] Bob Jones                | |
        | [x] Sandra Barrington-Smythe | |
        | [x] Jim                      |^|
        +------------------------------+-+

(excuse the lack of a down arrow on the scrollbar! ;-))

It's basically a common address book of known individuals to send a message to.

Using the same logic as I did above (which could well be wrong - I just have a hard job understanding a lot of the posts), I'd have thought because we are talking about known people, that they would be the 'who', as in 'who do you want to send this to?', e.g.:

Q: Who do you want to send this message to?
A: I want to send this to Jim, Sandra, and Fred
or
A: Jim, Sandra, and Fred are who I want to send this message to

So in this instance, if I had to one of 'to who' or 'to whom' as the field label (I cannot change this decision so it cannot be 'recipient'), would it still be 'to whom'?

I'm very happy you all seem to be in consensus at the moment, it's just that I don't understand the reasoning :-(

Dan



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[tcsbiz]

Your question would read:

Q: To whom do you want the message sent?
A: I went the message sent to Jim, John, and Mary. I the message sent to them.

I agree with some of the other posters to reword it with to, to recipient(s), or some other wording.

 

[SantaMufasa]

Dan,

I feel your pain...

I'd have thought because we are talking about known people, that they would be the 'who', as in 'who do you want to send this to?', e.g.:

Q: Who do you want to send this message to?
A: I want to send this to Jim, Sandra, and Fred
or
A: Jim, Sandra, and Fred are who I want to send this message to

Your frustration, in fact, derives from known people's names serve for both nominative/subjective and for objective senses...They become poor examples for understanding the distinction between nom./sub. versus obj. senses.


Let's do, however, replace their names with personal pronouns, which, I believe, will help to resolve the issue...Here is a re-write of your initial wording:

Q: To Whom do you want to send this message?
A: I want to send this to him (Jim), her (Sandra), and him (Fred).

It is not appropriate to say:

Q: To Who do you want to send this message?

A: I want to send this to he (Jim)
...to she (Sandra), and
...to he (Fred).

Note that [ul][li]I, he, she, we, andthey are Subjective/Nominative personal pronouns (the Doers in a sentence.)[/li][li]Me, him, her, us, andthem are Objective personal pronouns (the "Do-ees", i.e. recipients of the actions, in a sentence).[/li][/ul]

Is this helpful at all?



Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]
“Beware of those that seek to protect you from harm or risk. The cost will be your freedoms and your liberty.”

 

[p5wizard]

Do you have enough room on the webform?

[tt]
+------------------------------+-+
Choose here | [x] Fred Smith |^|
the people | [ ] Bob Jones | |
to send this | [x] Sandra Barrington-Smythe | |
message to: | [x] Jim |v|
+------------------------------+-+
[/tt]


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[AnotherHiggins]

P5 - even that sounds awkward to me. I think it would be better as: "Choose here the people to whom this message should be sent"

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[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Dave,

I still don't understand half of what you said, so I think I'm going to give up trying to understand this and just accept 'to whom'.

I hate not understanding why - but in this case, no-one can seem to explain this without using simple terms instead of huge words!

Thanks anyway!

Dan


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[SantaMufasa]

Dan,

As one who loves to share knowledge, there is a danger of sharing knowledge at a level that is either above, or below, the recipient's comfort level. Feedback of the recipient's comprehension is a key component of successful knowledge transfer. I truly appreciate your giving feedback that the concept is not yet clear versus simply "giving up" and walking away (which would not be fair to either of us).

With your permission, I'd like to try one more time, without using "lofty" terminology.

To confirm step-by-step concurrence/understanding on this topic:

Are you comfortable with the reason why these sentences use pronouns incorrectly?:[ul][li]Me like shortbread.[/li][li]Him paints beautiful portraits.[/li][li]Her drives fast.[/li][li]Us enjoy popular music[/li][li]Them work well together.[/li][/ul]In each case, above, the improper use of pronouns (should) hurt our ears because the pronouns act as subjects...the do-ers/actors of the sentences, yet the spelling of the pronouns do not convey that they are subjects. To fix the spelling problems (thus causing the pronouns to become actors in the sentences), they should appear as:[ul][li]I like shortbread.[/li][li]He paints beautiful portraits.[/li][li]She drives fast.[/li][li]We enjoy popular music[/li][li]They work well together.[/li][/ul]The spelling changes of the above pronouns cause them to become actors (versus victims <grin>).



Conversely, let's see what happens in sentences where we incorrectly spell pronouns to be actors when they should, instead, be victims of some action:[ul][li]The car struck I.[/li][li]The girl likes he.[/li][li]The cat scratched she.[/li][li]The host treated we well.[/li][li]I stored they in the cupboard.[/li][/ul]

I'm presuming that the incorrect examples, above, sound just as bad to you as they do to I (oops, me).

In the case where the pronouns are the actors of the sentences (where the appropriate pronouns are I, he, she, we, and they), the actor role we call nominative or subjective sense. Notably, an additional actor (i.e., nominative or subjective pronoun) is who.

In the case where the pronouns are the victims (i.e., recipients of the action of a sentence) the pronouns are me, him, her, us, and them, along with whom. These "victims" are in the opposite category from subjective/nominative...their category is objective...they are the object of the subject's actions.

Your original post in this thread asked about the situation of "To who" or "To whom". In this usage, "to" is in a category of words that generally describe where something happens (or, less frequently, when something occurs). This category of where/when-words includes other words such as:

aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, anti, around, as, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, concerning, considering, despite, down, during, except, excepting, excluding, following, for, from, in, inside, into, like, minus, near, of, off, on, onto, opposite, outside, over, past, per, plus, regarding, round, save, since, than, through, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, versus, via, with, within, without

The name for this category of words is prepositions. In common use, they form prepositional phrases. A prepositional phrase typically contains both the preposition (from the list, above) and the object of the preposition. Here are examples of sentences with prepositional phrases:[ul][li]Frank sat in his car.[/li][li]Betty took notes during class.[/li][li]Bill opened the door for her.[/li][li]Sarah sent the payment to him.[/li][li]The boss sent the reference, 'To whom it may concern'.[/li][/ul](I have bold-italicised the prepositional phrases in the sentences, above.)



As the term, object of the preposition implies, any personal pronouns for which there are both subject senses (i.e. I, he, she, we, they) and object senses (i.e., me, him, her, us, them), the object sense is appropriate (always) as the object of the preposition.

Let me know if this approach was more understandable (and less confused by frilly words).

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]
“Beware of those that seek to protect you from harm or risk. The cost will be your freedoms and your liberty.”

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Dave, sometimes you excel yourself!

That's a whole lot easier on the brain (especially first thing this morning). It's also easier now that I've looked up 'noun' and 'pronoun' in the dictionary, and think I can actually remember their meanings for longer than 5 seconds ('noun' == 'name' is easy enough for me to remember, I think).

While I wont say that I understand it 100%, I'm a lot closer than I was at this time yesterday. Now to go and edit that pesky label...

Many thanks for your perseverance!



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[mmerlinn]

[&nbsp;]
[blue]To[/blue] transfers activity from a subject to an object. Therefore, any pronoun used after [blue]to[/blue] requires one to use the objective case of the pronoun.

[blue]Whom[/blue] is the objective case of [blue]who[/blue], just like [blue]them[/blue] is the objective case of [blue]they[/blue].

Short list of subject/object pronouns:

[tt]
SUBJECT OBJECT
[blue]
I me
you you
he him
she her
it it
we us
they them
who whom
[/blue][/tt]

Note that sometimes "after" becomes foggy when the object is not physically after the [blue]to[/blue], like when the object is at the beginning of the sentence while the [blue]to[/blue] is at the end.

mmerlinn

http://mmerlinn.com

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