Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [80]
Similarly, whomever would be wrong in these two sentences: “We must offer it to whoever applies first”; “Give it to whoever wants it.” Again, in effect they are saying, “We must offer it to the person who applies first” and “Give it to the person who wants it.” Such constructions usually involve a choice between whoever and whomever (as opposed to a simple who and whom), which should always alert you to proceed with caution, but they need not. An exception—and a rather tricky one—is seen here: “The disputants differed diametrically as to who they thought might turn out to be the violator” (cited by Bernstein). The sentence is actually saying, “The disputants differed diametrically as to the identity of the person who, they thought, might turn out to be the violator.”
Most sentences, it must be said, are much more straightforward than this, and by performing a few verbal gymnastics you can usually decide with some confidence which case to use. But is it worth the bother? Bernstein, in his later years, thought not. In 1975, he wrote to twenty-five authorities on usage asking if they thought there was any real point in preserving whom except when it is directly governed by a preposition (as in “to whom it may concern”). Six voted to preserve whom, four were undecided, and fifteen thought it should be abandoned.
English has been shedding its pronoun declensions for hundreds of years; today who is the only relative pronoun that is still declinable. Preserving the distinction between who and whom does nothing to promote clarity or reduce ambiguity. It has become merely a source of frequent errors and perpetual uncertainty. Authorities have been tossing stones at whom for at least two hundred years—Noah Webster was one of the first to call it needless—but the word refuses to go away. A century from now it may be a relic, but for the moment you ignore it at the risk of being thought unrefined. And there is, in my view, a certain elegance in seeing a tricky whom properly applied. I for one would not like to see it go.
whodunit is the usual spelling for a mystery story. Note the single n.
whose. Two small problems here. One is the persistent belief that whose can apply only to people. The authorities appear to be unanimous that there is nothing wrong with saying, “The book, a picaresque novel whose central characters are . . .” rather than the clumsier “a picaresque novel the central characters of which are . . .”
The second problem arises from a failure to discriminate between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses (discussed under THAT, WHICH). Consider: “Many parents, whose children ride motorbikes, live in constant fear of an accident” (Observer). By making the subordinate clause parenthetical (i.e., setting it off with commas), the writer is effectively saying, “Many parents live in constant fear of an accident, and by the way, their children ride motorbikes.” The writer meant, of course, that the parents live in fear because their children ride motorbikes; that notion is not incidental to the full thought. Thus the clause is restrictive and the commas should be removed. Gowers cites this example from a wartime training manual: “Pilots, whose minds are dull, do not usually live long.” Removing the commas would convert a sweeping insult into sound advice.
The same problem often happens with who, as in this sentence from my old stylebook at The Times: “Normalcy