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EDITORIALS: Eddy Fan and Dale M Needham Deciding who to admit to a critical care unit BMJ 2007; 0: bmj.39378.654329.80v1 [Full text]

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Who / Whom

Thomas Szasz   (30 November 2007)

Re: Who / Whom

Neville W Goodman   (5 December 2007)

Who / Whom 30 November 2007
Thomas Szasz, Professor of psychiatry emeritus Manlius, NY 13104, USA Send response to journal: Re: Who / Whom	Why is writing "who" when "whom" is called for considered proper English in a journal called "British"? Would you publish a paper whose author, referring to patient Smith, wrote, " I admitted he last night"? Competing interests: None declared
Re: Who / Whom 5 December 2007
Neville W Goodman, Consultant Anaesthetist Southmead Hospital, Bristol, BS10 5NB Send response to journal: Re: Re: Who / Whom	According to a newspaper style guide (1): ‘Use of "whom" has all but disappeared from spoken English, and seems to be going the same way in most forms of written English too. If you are not sure, it is much better to use "who" when "whom" would traditionally have been required than to use "whom" incorrectly for "who", which will make you look not just wrong but wrong and pompous.’ Trask (2) reckons the word is “all but dead in English, even in formal written English [except where] it is the object of a preposition which immediately precedes it”, eg, “To whom did you give it”. According to Trask this is the only case in which whom is normal and proper. So while Szasz is grammatically correct, usage has overtaken him, and there are not many people around to whom the rule can be explained, because few know what a preposition and an object are. 1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/page/0,,184822,00.html 2 Trask RL. Mind the gaffe. London:Penguin, 2001. Competing interests: None declared