Plain Words (28 page)

(15)
Who
and
whom

Who
is the subjective case and
whom
the objective. The proper use of the two words should present no difficulty. But we are so unaccustomed to different case-formations in English that when we are confronted with them we are liable to lose our heads. In the matter of
who
and
whom
good writers have over many centuries been perverse in refusing to do what the grammarians tell them. They will insist on writing sentences like ‘Who should I see there …', as Steele did in the
Spectator
; ‘Young Ferdinand, (whom they suppose is drowned)': Shakespeare, in
The Tempest
; and ‘Whom do men say that I am?', asked by Christ in the Bible. Now, any schoolchild can see that, by the rules,
who
in the first quotation, being the object of
see
, ought to be
whom
(‘Whom should I see there'), and that
whom
in the second and third quotations, being in the one the subject of
is
, and in the other the complement of
am
, ought to be
who
(Young Ferdinand, ‘who, they suppose, is drowned'; ‘Who do men say that I am?'). What, then, is the ordinary person to believe?

There are some who would have us do away with
whom
altogether, as nothing but a mischief-maker. That might be a useful way out. But then, as was asked in the correspondence columns of the
Spectator
by someone under the name ‘A. Wood-Owl':

Regarding the suggested disuse of ‘whom', may I ask by who a lead can be given? To who, to wit to who of the ‘cultured' authorities, can we appeal to boo whom, and to boom who? (December, 1948)

Whom
will take some killing. Shakespeare has his distinguished followers, such as Sir Winston Churchill (‘The slaves of the Lamp … render faithful and obedient service to whomsoever holds the talisman'), Mr E. M. Forster (‘a creature whom we pretend is here already …'),
*
Lord David Cecil in
Two Quiet Lives
(‘and whom, he knew, would never be seduced away from him by the tawdry glitter of the world'),
The Times
(‘He was not the man whom the police think may be able to help them'), and even Mr Somerset Maugham, in a story from
The Trembling of a Leaf
(‘Bateman could not imagine whom it was that he passed off as his nephew'). This usage is, moreover, defended by Jespersen.

Of course the opposite mistake is also made:

He was a chancellor who, grudging as was the acknowledgement he received for it, everyone knew to have saved his party.

Note.
Gowers concluded by saying that ‘it has not yet become pedantic—at any rate in writing—to use
who
and
whom
in what grammarians would call the right way', and he therefore advised ordinary writers to ignore the ‘vagaries of the great'.

Using
whom
for
who
is still a mistake, whether Shakespeare once did it or not, and those who notice this error in contemporary writing are likely to interpret it as that dreaded thing, a ‘genteelism'. But it is no longer so necessary to worry about what Gowers called the opposite mistake. He found using
who
for
whom
to be rarer than
whom
for
who
, but now it is in many circumstances entirely normal to do this. Indeed, the question ‘Whom should I see there …' (Steele corrected) would these days strike most people as absurdly stiff. It is not yet idiomatic to put
who
for
whom
immediately after a preposition, as a
Guardian
writer does here: ‘my ex with who I was still in love'; but ordinary British English accepts and even expects, ‘my ex, who I was still in love with'. The slow decline of
whom
does leave room for confusion. Nowadays ‘Who am I to love?' could be taken to mean either ‘What person should be the object of my affections?' or ‘Worm that I am, how dare I love at all?' But it has to be admitted that outside the confines of formal prose, the worm's perspective on this question is dying away. ~

(16)
Whose

There lingers an old-fashioned rule that
whose
must not be used of inanimate objects: we may say ‘authors whose books are famous' but we must not say ‘books whose authors are famous'. For the second, we must fall back on an ugly roundabout way of putting it, and say ‘books the authors of which are famous'. This rule is a cramping one, and produces not only ugly sentences but a temptation to misplace commas:

There are now a large number of direct controls, the purpose of which is to allocate scarce resources of all kinds between the various applicants for their use.

Here the writer, having duly respected the prejudice against the inanimate
whose
, finds that
controls the purpose
is an awkward
juxtaposition, and so opts to put a comma after
controls
. But the relative clause is a defining one (these are ‘controls that have the purpose of allocating scarce resources …'), not a commenting one (‘these controls, the purpose of which is X, are numerous'). The comma is therefore misleading.

Sir Alexander Cadogan added that legislatures were not unaccustomed to ratifying decisions the entry into force of which was contingent on circumstances beyond their control.

In this instance the writer has properly resisted the temptation to lessen the inevitable ugliness of the construction by putting a comma after
decisions
. But how much more smoothly each sentence would run if the writer had felt at liberty to say
controls whose purpose
and
decisions whose entry
.

The rule is so hampering and pointless that even the grammarians are in revolt against it. Fowler said:

Let us in the name of common sense prohibit the prohibition of
whose inanimate
; good writing is surely difficult enough without the forbidding of things that have historical grammar and present intelligibility and obvious convenience on their side, and lack only—starch.

There are welcome signs that Fowler's advice is now being followed in official publications:

The hospital whose characteristics and associations link it with a particular religious denomination …

That revolution the full force of whose effects we are beginning to feel …

There has been built up a single centrally organised blood transfusion service whose object is …

(1)
ing
endings

Words ending with
ing
are mostly verbal participles or gerunds, and, as we shall see, it is not always easy to say which is which. By way of introduction it will be enough to observe that when they are of the nature of participles they may be true verbs (‘I was
working
'), or adjectives (‘a
working
agreement'), or in rare cases prepositions (‘
concerning
this question') or conjunctions (‘
supposing
this happened'). But if they are of the nature of gerunds they are always nouns (‘I am pleased at his
coming
')—or rather a hybrid between a noun and a verb, for you may use the gerund with the construction either of a noun (‘after the careful
reading
of these papers') or of a mixture between a verb and a noun (‘after carefully
reading
these papers'). It is most confusing, but fortunately we are seldom called on to put a label on these words, and so I have preferred to give this section an indeterminate title.

Numerous pitfalls beset the use of
ing-
words. Here are some of them.

(
a
) Absolute construction. This is, in itself, straightforward enough. The absolute construction, in the words of the
OED
, is a name given to a clause ‘not syntactically dependent on another part of the sentence'. In the sentence ‘The teacher having restored order, the class resumed', the phrase ‘the teacher having restored order' forms an absolute construction. But there is no absolute construction in the sentence ‘The teacher, having restored order, called on her cowed pupils to continue'. Here
the teacher
is the subject of the sentence. Because of a confusion with that type of sentence, it is a curiously common error to put a comma in the absolute construction (‘the teacher, having restored order, the class resumed').
*

(
b
) Unattached or dangling participle. This blunder is rather like the last. A writer begins a sentence with a participle (which, since it is a sort of adjective, must be given a noun to support it) and then forgets to give it its noun, thus leaving it ‘dangling':

Arising out of a collision between a removal van and a fully loaded bus in a fog, Mr X, removal van driver, appeared on a charge of manslaughter.

Grammatically in this sentence it was the van driver who arose out of this collision, not the charge against him. He probably did, but that was not what the writer meant.

Whilst requesting you to furnish the return now outstanding you are advised that in future it would greatly facilitate X … if you were to Y.

Here
requesting
is unattached. If the structure of this rather clumsy sentence is to be retained it must run ‘Whilst requesting you … I advise you that …'.

As I have said, some
ing-
words have won the right to be treated as prepositions. Among them are
regarding
,
considering
,
owing to
,
concerning
and
failing
. When any of these is used as a preposition, there can be no question of its being misused as an unattached participle:

Considering the attack that had been made on him, his speech was moderate in tone.

If, however,
considering
were used not as a preposition-participle but as an adjective-participle, it could be unattached. It is so in:

Considering the attack on him beneath his notice, his speech was moderate in tone.

Here, if the first part of the sentence must stand, the second needs to be amended: ‘Considering the attack on him beneath his notice, the man gave a speech that was moderate in tone'.

Past participles, as well as present, may become unattached:

Administered at first by the National Gallery, it was not until 1917 that the appointment of a separate board and director enabled a fully independent policy to be pursued.

The writer must have started with the intention of making the Tate Gallery (the true topic here) the subject of the sentence, but by the end,
administered
has been left unattached.

Formal application is now being made for the necessary wayleave consent, and as soon as received the work will proceed.

Grammatically
received
can only be attached to
work
, and that is nonsense. The writer should have said, ‘as soon as this is received'.

(
c
) Unattached gerund. A gerund can become unattached in much the same way as a participle:

Indeed we know little of Stalin's personality at all: a few works of Bolshevik theory, arid and heavy, and speeches still more impersonal, without literary grace, repeating a few simple formulas with crushing weight—after reading these Stalin appears more a myth than a man.

Grammatically, ‘after reading these' means after Stalin has read them, not after we have.

The use of unattached participles and gerunds is becoming so common that critics may soon have to throw in their hand and recognise it as idiomatic. But as they have not done so yet, it should be avoided.

Note
. Not all critics are prepared to throw in their hand on this one even now. After all, if the reader is left free to decide
on the intent behind such constructions, the danger arises of an ambiguity that cannot be unscrambled. Take the sentence ‘Having been brought up with lax morals, I did not fully blame the bag-snatcher': in a grammatical free-for-all, how is one to know whether this implies two people with lax morals, or one with lax morals, and another with a soft, forgiving heart? ~

(
d
) Gerund versus infinitive. In what seems to be a completely arbitrary way, some nouns, adjectives and verbs like to take an infinitive, and some a gerund with a preposition. For instance:

Instances could be multiplied. There is no rule. It can only be a matter of observation and consulting a dictionary when in doubt.

(
e
) The ‘fused participle'. All authorities agree that it is idiomatic English to write ‘the
Bill's
getting a second reading surprised everyone'—that is to say, it is correct to treat
getting
as a gerund requiring
Bill's
to be in the possessive. What they are not agreed about is whether it is also correct to treat
getting
as a participle, and write ‘the
Bill
getting a second reading surprised everyone'. If that is a legitimate grammatical construction, the subject of the sentence, which cannot be
Bill
by itself, or
getting
by itself, must be a fusion of the two. Hence the name ‘fused participle'.

This is not in itself a matter of any great interest or importance. But it is notable as having been the occasion of a battle of the giants, Fowler and Jespersen. Fowler condemned the ‘fused participle' as a construction ‘grammatically indefensible' that he said was ‘rapidly corrupting modern English style'. Jespersen defended it against both these charges. Those best competent to judge seem to have awarded Jespersen a win on points.