Who or whom? When to use whom in academic writing

Use who when the person does the action and whom when the action is done to them: who wrote the report, but the reviewer to whom it was sent. If he fits the gap, write who; if him fits, write whom. In our view, whom is not dying so much as retiring to formal writing, and an academic paper is formal writing, so the few places it still matters are worth getting right.

EdCitation publishes this guide, built from four dictionaries' own pages, Chicago's Q&A, two university writing centres, a 1921 book and two corpus studies, all read on 27 September 2026. What could not be confirmed is marked.

Every word of your paper, each who and whom included, stays yours, because EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's work. What it does is check the file you wrote: Mechanics QA, part of Pro, reads the whole paper for formatting, citations, numbers and the language slips a spell-checker lets through.

When do you use who and when whom?

Who is the subject form and whom the object form, the same split as he and him or they and them. Merriam-Webster (n.d.-a) describes who as the doer of a verb's action and whom as its receiver, and calls whom the preferred choice after a preposition. The American Heritage Dictionary's usage note adds the warning that matters most: whom is right when it is the object of the verb or preposition, not whenever it merely comes after one (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.-a).

In questions

Turn the question into a statement. "Who reviewed the draft?" becomes "X reviewed the draft": X is the subject, so who. "Whom did the committee appoint?" becomes "The committee appointed X": X is the object, so whom, in formal writing. This statement test is the one Merriam-Webster (n.d.-a) teaches.

In relative clauses

Split a relative clause into its own sentence: "the participants who completed the survey" hides "the participants completed the survey" (subject, who); "the participants whom we interviewed" hides "we interviewed the participants" (object, whom). Cambridge calls object whom formal or written, and most common after a preposition (Cambridge University Press & Assessment, n.d.-a).

The he or him trick

Swap in a personal pronoun: he, she or they means who; him, her or them means whom. San José State University's writing centre teaches it in steps: cover everything before the gap, test the rest with each pronoun, keep the one that sounds right (Homann, 2014). Chicago's Q&A recommends the same switch to anyone who does not trust their ear (University of Chicago Press, n.d.). Rearrange first: "whom we interviewed" only shows itself as "we interviewed them".

Who or whom: which is right in each sentence?

The table gives the formal answer, the one a paper needs.

Whoever or whomever?

Whoever and whomever follow the same rule, applied inside their own clause rather than to the word in front. Merriam-Webster (n.d.-d) tests with they and them: "Give a slice to whoever wants one" keeps whoever even after to, because whoever is the subject of wants; "Invite whomever you like" takes whomever, because you like them. The dictionary adds that whoever is the more common form in both positions, and that whomever is sometimes chosen only because it sounds formal.

Merriam-Webster's list of hypercorrections includes "The prize is for whomever guesses the correct number", which needs whoever: the whole clause is the object of for, and whoever is its subject (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b).

Can you use who after a preposition?

In speech, yes, when the preposition moves to the end: Merriam-Webster (n.d.-c) calls "Who did you speak to?" standard in all but the most formal contexts. Directly after the preposition, no. The American Heritage note says whom survives as the standard form there, "for whom (not for who)" (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.-a). Oxford's learner's dictionary calls whom after a preposition very formal and gives "Who should I address the letter to?" as the natural spoken version (Oxford University Press, n.d.), and Cambridge sets "with whom" against the informal "who with" (Cambridge University Press & Assessment, n.d.-b).

So of three orders, one is out for a paper:

• the examiner to whom the thesis was sent: formal and correct
• the examiner who the thesis was sent to: informal, fine in speech
• the examiner to who the thesis was sent: not standard

Whether a sentence may end on its preposition at all is a separate myth, taken apart in ending a sentence with a preposition.

Why is "whom I think is" wrong?

Because the pronoun is the subject of is, and I think is only an aside. "The candidate whom I think is best" stands for "I think he is best", not "I think him". It is a hypercorrection: whom chosen to sound correct where who is correct.

The examples the authorities give

Chicago's Q&A answers a reader who had turned "Who shall I say is calling?" into "I shall say whom": the rearranging stopped too soon, because the object of say is the whole clause "who is calling", and who is its subject (University of Chicago Press, n.d.). Merriam-Webster (n.d.-b) compares "Whom shall I say is calling?" to "I shall say him is calling". Axel Bohmann, a linguist behind the corpus study below, cites "Whom do you think is next on the list?" as whom where it is technically not correct (Watson, 2022).

Where the dictionary and the usage guides part

Merriam-Webster's own entry records this use without calling it a mistake: whom is occasionally the subject of a verb, especially near a verb it could be mistaken for the object of, as in "people … whom you never thought would sympathize" (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-c). A dictionary records what writers do; in a paper, follow the usage guides.

Why a popular shortcut fails here

George Mason University's writing centre offers a rule of thumb for relative clauses: who is followed by a verb, whom by a subject (George Mason University Writing Center, 2014). It works for "the woman who stole the painting", but in "the candidate who I think is best" a subject, I, follows the gap and the answer is still who. Strike the aside (I think, we believe, they said), then test.

Is whom dying? What the corpus evidence says

In everyday use, largely; in formal writing, not yet. The studies we read find whom falling for more than a century and surviving mainly in formal writing.

Sapir's forecast, 1921

The linguist Edward Sapir predicted that within a couple of hundred years "not even the most learned jurist" would ask "Whom did you see?", and noted that speakers already said "The man I saw" rather than "The man whom I saw" (Sapir, 1921). A century on, the forecast is half right.

Two centuries of American writing

Bohmann et al. (2021) traced whom through the Corpus of Historical American English, written texts from 1810 to 2009. It fell steadily: by their ranking, the fifth fastest-receding word in the corpus, after shall, nor, vain and whence, and about a tenth as frequent as who throughout the twentieth century. Yet the fall slowed considerably after 1950. Their reading is that whom turned from an ordinary grammatical word into a stylistic marker. Lars Hinrichs, a co-author, said that at its early rate it "would be gone by now", and it is not (Watson, 2022).

Britain, 1961 to 1991

Leech (2004) compared matched corpora of published British English from 1961 and 1991 to 1992. Whom fell, but so did who, whose and which, most of all after a preposition (to whom), while clauses like someone I spoke to grew. Leech called the findings provisional.

Google Books, counted by us

On 27 September 2026 we read the Google Books Ngram Viewer's English corpus for lower-case who and whom (Google, n.d.).

The counts mix questions, relative clauses and set phrases such as "to whom it may concern", the corpus changes in make-up, and we cannot explain the jump after 2020. It is a rough picture, not a study.

What we could not confirm

Bohmann et al. (2021) report that earlier studies disagree: one from 1994 saw little ongoing change, one from 2002 "staggering" declines in written and spoken corpora from the 1960s to the 1990s. We read both only as reported there, and found no study of academic prose alone.

Where did whom come from?

From Old English. Merriam-Webster (n.d.-c) traces whom through Middle English to hwām, the dative of hwā, "who", first used before the twelfth century; the American Heritage Dictionary gives hwǣm and hwām (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.-b). The slide is old too: the Online Etymology Dictionary dates who used for whom to about 1300 (Harper, n.d.). A short history of English tells the wider story.

Should you use whom in academic writing?

Yes, where the grammar calls for it, and always straight after a preposition. Chicago's editors say the subject and object distinction is often ignored in casual prose but "remains an important one" in formal contexts (University of Chicago Press, 2021). APA's manual gives it a section, 4.20, "Pronouns as Subjects and Objects", according to the contents APA publishes (American Psychological Association, 2020); we could not read the section, and the grammar pages on APA's website do not cover it. George Mason's writing centre says whom has not yet left academic writing (George Mason University Writing Center, 2014).

In our view the risk is lopsided: Merriam-Webster (n.d.-b) says few people notice or object to who in place of whom, and warns that the reverse can get you into trouble.

1. Find the style your course names. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads it from the brief.
2. Put whom straight after a preposition: to whom, of whom, for whom.
3. Test every other who or whom with he or him, after striking asides such as I think.
4. Rewrite when whom sounds stiff. The American Heritage note suggests that or no word: "the participants we interviewed" (HarperCollins Publishers, n.d.-a). APA's manual has a section on who versus that (4.19), which we did not read, so check your guide before using that for people.
5. Give whoever its own verb, whatever comes in front.
6. Check the finished file with Mechanics QA, then read each whom yourself.

As with the Oxford comma, your style guide settles it (who decides what is correct English explains why); academic tone covers the wider register.

How does EdCitation help with a formal paper?

EdCitation is the best tool for the parts of a paper that can be looked up, because it builds every reference from the publisher's record rather than writing one, and your sentences, whoms included, stay entirely yours.

• Mechanics QA, Pro at $8 a month (pricing): formatting against the APA 7 student paper, comments and tracked changes left in the file, citations matched to the list, figures that disagree, and the language slips a spell-checker lets through. Its description does not name who and whom, so run the test above yourself.
• Check your paper, Find sources (about 300 million published works), Cite a source and Verify references: free, no account.

What the tools returned for this guide

From the DOI of Bohmann et al. (2021), Cite a source returned a correct APA 7 entry: "Bohmann, A., Bohmann, M., & Hinrichs, L. (2021). Dissemination dynamics of receding words: A diachronic case study of whom. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 4, Article 654154." Leech's chapter, from its DOI, came back without its editors, Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg; our list adds them. Sapir's book, from its Project Gutenberg address, came back as "Sapir, E. (n.d.). Language: An introduction to the study of speech. Project Gutenberg.", so add the year, 1921, in the page details.

Find sources, asked for the claim "the pronoun whom is declining in written English", returned 1,340,971 results led by titles that merely contain whom; Kemp Malone's 1948 College English article "Whom" came 41st. Neither that search nor a second, in the study's own terms, put Bohmann et al. (2021) in its first 100. For so common a word, search the title or the DOI.

Quick questions

Is it who or whom after a preposition?

Whom, when the preposition comes directly before it: "to whom", "with whom". Who is standard in speech only when the preposition moves to the end, as in "Who did you speak to?"

What is the he or him trick for who and whom?

Replace the word with a personal pronoun in its own clause: if he, she or they fits, write who; if him, her or them fits, write whom.

Is whom dying out?

Largely in speech, not in formal writing. Bohmann et al. (2021) found whom falling in American writing from 1810, then slowing after 1950 as it became a mark of formal style.

Is "whom I think is" correct?

No. The pronoun is the subject of is, and I think is an aside, so formal writing needs who: "the candidate who I think is best".

Can EdCitation check who and whom in my paper?

EdCitation never writes or corrects your sentences. Mechanics QA, part of Pro, checks a whole paper's formatting, citations, numbers and the language slips a spell-checker lets through; who against whom is a choice to test yourself with he or him.

References

• American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition
• Bohmann, A., Bohmann, M., & Hinrichs, L. (2021). Dissemination dynamics of receding words: A diachronic case study of whom. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 4, Article 654154. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2021.654154
• Cambridge University Press & Assessment. (n.d.-a). Relative pronouns. Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/relative-pronouns-whom
• Cambridge University Press & Assessment. (n.d.-b). Who, whom. Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/who-whom
• George Mason University Writing Center. (2014, March 28). Who/whom what? https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/articles/7063
• Google. (n.d.). Google Books Ngram Viewer: who, whom [English corpus, 1800–2022]. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=who%2Cwhom&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=0
• Harper, D. (n.d.). Whom. In Online etymology dictionary. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/whom
• HarperCollins Publishers. (n.d.-a). Who. In The American Heritage dictionary of the English language (5th ed.). Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=who
• HarperCollins Publishers. (n.d.-b). Whom. In The American Heritage dictionary of the English language (5th ed.). Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=whom
• Homann, C. (2014). Who, whom, whoever, and whomever [Handout]. San José State University Writing Center. https://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Who-Whom-Whoever-Whomever.pdf
• Leech, G. (2004). Recent grammatical change in English: Data, description, theory. In K. Aijmer & B. Altenberg (Eds.), Advances in corpus linguistics (pp. 61–81). Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004333710_005
• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). How to use "who" vs. "whom". Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/who-vs-whom-grammar-usage
• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Hypercorrections: Are you making these 6 common mistakes? Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/6-common-hypercorrections-and-how-to-avoid-them/a-whom-too-far
• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-c). Whom. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whom
• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-d). Whomever vs. whoever: Choose the right word. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whomever-vs-whoever-choose-the-right-word
• Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Whom. In Oxford advanced learner's dictionary. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/whom
• Sapir, E. (1921). Language: An introduction to the study of speech. Harcourt, Brace and Company. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12629
• University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). Usage and grammar (Q&A No. 306). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Usage/faq0306.html
• University of Chicago Press. (2021, October 26). Chicago style workout 59: Who, me? CMOS Shop Talk. https://cmosshoptalk.com/2021/10/26/chicago-style-workout-59-who-me/
• Watson, K. (2022, October 21). The bell tolls for whom: The complicated fate of the stuffiest object pronoun. Life & Letters, The University of Texas at Austin. https://lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu/2022/10/the-bell-tolls-for-whom-the-complicated-fate-of-the-stuffiest-object-pronoun/