semi-colon, who and whom

As a personal challenge to myself I try to use things in my writing that you don’t normally see.

I believe I have the use of a semi-colon mostly correct.

A semi-colon can replace and. If you have a sentence that states “I drove fifty miles and it was a long trip”, this could be changed to “I drove fifty miles; it was a long trip”. To the best of my knowledge this is correct.

Semi-colons can also be used to “connect” separate sentences together as long as they’re not fragments, such as “The sun was bright and filled the sky with light; it was also hot”. To the best of my knowledge this is also correct.

Concerning who(ever) and whom(ever), I have not mastered when to use which but am getting better at it.

Who is subjective (I, we, you, he, she, it, they).

Whom is objective (me, us, you, him, her, it, them).

Whoever and whomever follow the same rules as who and whom.

The trick to knowing when to use which is done by isolating the clause, then testing with he and him to see which sounds right.

Examples (that I believe are correct):

[Who/Whom] is at the door?

“He is at the door” sounds right, therefore the correct word to use is who.

[Who/Whom] should I say is calling?

I’ll isolate (“is calling”) only and try that. “He is calling” sounds correct, therefore the correct word to use is who.

Bob is the person [who/whom] she picked to lead the project.

The part to pay attention to is “she picked”. “She picked him” sounds correct, therefore whom is the correct word to use.

[Who/Whom] could it be?

I’ll flop the position. “Could it be him?” sounds correct, therefore whom is the proper word to use.

[Whoever/Whomever] arrives at the door first will win the prize.

This is an easy one. “He arrives”. The correct word to use is whoever.

. . .

I’ll probably never master the English language, but at least I try. :)

Copyright ©1975-2007 menga - Today is Tuesday, March 16 2010; the time when you loaded this web page was 11:37pm UTC. This blog is authored from Tampa Florida - a place where all the cool people are :-) If this web site has not been updated in the past 30 days, you can safely assume I'm sick, dead or finally got a life interesting enough to get away from the computer. On a final note, remember to save your shit.