Of all the thorny grammar missteps to take on, “who” vs “whom” is one of the trickiest to tackle. In an effort to help our readers be grammatically correct in all situations, we’re going to provide rules so easy to follow, we’ll be struggling to fill up the rest of this blog.

Let’s take a sentence out of a children’s book (see, we’re definitely getting basic here).  Sally hits Jimmy. Sounds like a complex torts case, but let’s continue before the attorneys arrive.

Sally is the subject. Poor Jimmy is the object (or plaintiff if you’re a lawyer).

Subject = “Who”   Object = “Whom”

So, it’s “Who hit Jimmy?” or conversely, “Whom did Sally hit?”

A good way to test whether to use who or whom is to remember that “who” replaces “he,” “she,” “we,” and “they.”  “Whom” replaces “him,” “her,” “us,” and “them.”

Pretty easy, huh? Okay, I think we’re done here and the courtroom is filling up. Gotta go. Who knows the way out?