5 ms·

Dear people-who-run-Twitter, whom to follow, whom

75 points by ralph 16y ago

ralph 16y ago
Victoria Coren's had an interesting career. Writer, TV presenter, including _Balderdash and Piffle_ connected to the Oxford English Dictionary, poker player, and porn film maker, though just the once. It's nice to see see someone well known, in the UK at least, show their pedant side. Hopefully, her appearance on news.yc will make twitter take note. :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Coren http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Coren
Raphael 16y ago
While you're at it, put "following" before the number to distinguish it better from "followers".
m0nty 16y ago
To come back with a predictable response: everyone says "who" even if they mean "whom". Using "whom", even if it is grammatically correct, is perceived to be wrong in most conversational situations, or other informal situations like Twitter. Anyway, the quick guide: if you would say "him/her", use "whom", and if you would say "he/she", use "who". "Who is that?" ... "He is the programmer." "To whom is the message addressed?" ... "It is addressed to him." He -> Who / Him -> Whom But who wouldn't say "Who is it addressed to?" You'd sound like the posh bloke from an Ealing Comedy if you used "whom" all the time.
- ralph 16y ago
  You might sound like Inspector Morse; he was repeatedly correcting Lewis. Here in England, "everyone" doesn't say "who" when they mean "whom".
  - m0nty 16y ago
    What, that Ralph Corderoy, one-time of the PCG? You should be able to work out who I am from my username ;) Anyway, I can't remember when I last heard someone use "whom" outside of slightly cheesy television series like Morse...
    - ralph 16y ago
      Almost certainly that one. Mr Burns, is that you? You've had me accessing bits that hadn't been scrubbed in a long time and have suffered some rot. Have you just arrived at number 63 or just left? There's a Dorset LUG if you're interested. Morse can be cheesy, but I thought it was a cultural reference that Americans may know. :-)
      - m0nty 16y ago
        Sent email, rather than doing our correspondence here :] Left Dorset last year, now in Hampshire again.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    I've always used whom, but now I live in Canada I find myself missing it more often than I did in England. Perhaps it's just that I was taught when to use who and whom.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    The vast majority do, except when the word is preceded by a preposition. E,g: "Who is it addressed to?" versus "To whom is it addressed?"
jjcm 16y ago
Often times proper grammar isn't the best approach from a marketing standpoint. Look at apple's use of, "the funnest _ yet" slogans that they used for a while. Catering to the most commonly used vernacular is generally a better strategy from a marketing perspective. I'm going out on a limb here, but my bet is that the mistake is on purpose.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Depending on your target demographic obviously. If you're aiming for the general market then you're absolutely right, you'll hit more birds with your stones if you talk to people on their level. However, if you're aiming college grads or PhD grads, you're probably going to annoy them if you're letting grammatical errors enter your marketing. I've closed BBC news articles when there's been a grammatical mistake in the first paragraph. I didn't pay my License Fee in the UK for them to abuse it with bad news.
  - waqf 16y ago
    I have to say that the BBC news has more spelling and grammar errors per thousand words than most blogs I read. ... now let me try desperately to bring this back on topic by saying that I think the thread above blaming Britain for grammatical prescriptivism is way off. Strunk and White popularized some prescriptions unknown in the UK (such as not using "which" in the role of "that") and in my thoroughly anecdotal experience Americans spell [by the conventions of the country they're in] significantly better than Brits do.
- ralph 16y ago
  Maybe Twitter should consider changing to "Whom to follow" as the quirkiness would stand out to those unfamiliar with "whom". May help partially offset the slight staidness.
- alxp 16y ago
  Think different(ly).
petercooper 16y ago
William Safire said it best: "The best rule for dealing with who vs. whom is this: Whenever whom is required, recast the sentence. This keeps a huge section of the hard disk of your mind available for baseball averages." Put this in the "most people don't care" bin along with the subjunctive mood, which I see intelligent people failing to use more often than not.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  See also less vs. fewer.
- Terretta 16y ago
  I wish I were in a subjunctive mood.
wccrawford 16y ago
I'm not convinced that it should be 'whom'. It's a sentence fragment. It's not a subject or an object of a sentence. Replacing 'who' with 'he' or 'him' makes no sense either way. And lastly: It's not a novel or paper. It's just a quick phrase used artistically. With 'whom' is sounds stuffy and out of place. 'Who' sounds correct in the context, and hits the target audience.
- ralph 16y ago
  You test with "he" versus "him" in the reply to the question, not by replacing "who/whom" in the question itself. So the answer to "whom to follow" is "follow him", not "follow he".
omaranto 16y ago
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the who/whom distinction in North American English has been ignored so much for a long enough period of time to say that ignoring it is now correct. On the other hand, the distinction is still commonly observed in British English, I think. So basically Victoria Coren is asking twitter to rewrite things in her dialect. I guess she's free to ask. And maybe they should do some internationalization...
- liedra 16y ago
  Just because lazy people in North America couldn't be bothered working it out any more doesn't mean Twitter shouldn't set a good example. Ignoring it is not correct, the distinction is correct. It's not a dialect, either, given that it's, uh, the original.
  - viraptor 16y ago
    Given that there already is an official distinction between "American English" and "British English", I don't think your comment is very correct. It might be just another rule to add (actually remove) in the A.E. schoolbooks. Languages evolve. If enough people drop "whom" in America, arguing about this change would be like arguing about whether sweets or candy is "correct".
    - liedra 16y ago
      This still doesn't make it a dialect though :) Sorry, but it just annoys me to see American English fanatics say how British English is "wrong", or a "dialect" of American English when it was the original base of American English to start with :) I do agree with you, languages evolve. But that doesn't mean we should just drop grammar altogether. I was a little snappy in my original response, and I apologise for that, but the sentiment is still the same.
      - nollidge 16y ago
        Saying American English evolved from British English is just as false as the reverse, and just as false as saying humans evolved from monkeys. Both evolved from a common ancestor. British English has changed just as much as American English has since they began to split in the 17-18th centuries.
languagehacker 16y ago
As a linguist, I can say resolutely that your prescriptivism is basically pounding your fists against the immovable brick wall of change. All types of case are rapidly disappearing from English. It's a continuing trend and has been for hundreds of years. The ambiguity generated is a trade-off people make for a variety of conveniences, let alone to fit in. The subjunctive mood is basically gone from practiced speech, too. None of it is terribly worth lamenting. In fact, changing it to "whom" would do nothing more than alienate its large-scale market, who aren't all leather elbow pads and Strunk & White, but rather real people who exercise language outside of the confines of a book report. Sorry, dude. It's just not worth getting bent out of shape about.
- theycallmemorty 16y ago
  There's a joke in there about language being dynamic and you referring to @VictoriaCohen (clearly female) as a 'dude'.
  - jsharpe 16y ago
    "Dude" has been unisex for a while now. It would be almost offensive (not to mention dated) to call someone a "dudette".
- Hexstream 16y ago
  The immovable brick wall of change? That doesn't sound right...
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - boredguy8 16y ago
    I think that's the point. Good writing often doesn't make sense on a literal level. Apart from this, my favorite example from recently: "and with Kevin Garnett and the newly-signed Jermaine O’Neal, Danny Ainge has just successfully assembled the greatest collection of big men in the history of 2002." http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-harangody-boston-and-gathering.html http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-harangody-boston-...
kmfrk 16y ago
It doesn't bother me on an American website. On a British website, I would notice it, but foregoing "whom" is an old American tradition.
- waqf 16y ago
  I wouldn't point this out in a discussion on any other topic (honest), but you mean "forgoing" (going without), not "foregoing" (previous).
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    Thanks for the disambiguation. HN keeps me posting at the weirdest hours of the day for some reason.
anamax 16y ago
If the fans of BE want to win these things, they need to work on the Indians, not the Americans. (The US doesn't look to the UK for language lessons. We fight amongst ourselves.) Of course, even winning the "world-wide English" wars may not be enough to influence Americans. BTW - Does French or German have these problems?
- tjarratt 16y ago
  I can't speak on the issue of the German language, but France has the Académie Française, whose job it is to standardize the language and approve new changes. They carry no legal clout, but where they go, the french language usually follows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Functions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Fu...
  - avibryant 16y ago
    The "French language" may follow, but the Quebecois sure don't... (so, yes, French has exactly the same issue).
jcsalterego 16y ago
The same goes for Facebook's blatant abuse of the neuter singular "their" instead of "his/her" -- which really can be resolved most of the time since Facebook usually possess people's genders. Anyway...

75 points by ralph 16y ago

ralph 16y ago

Victoria Coren's had an interesting career. Writer, TV presenter, including _Balderdash and Piffle_ connected to the Oxford English Dictionary, poker player, and porn film maker, though just the once. It's nice to see see someone well known, in the UK at least, show their pedant side. Hopefully, her appearance on news.yc will make twitter take note. :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Coren http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Coren

Raphael 16y ago

While you're at it, put "following" before the number to distinguish it better from "followers".

m0nty 16y ago

To come back with a predictable response: everyone says "who" even if they mean "whom". Using "whom", even if it is grammatically correct, is perceived to be wrong in most conversational situations, or other informal situations like Twitter. Anyway, the quick guide: if you would say "him/her", use "whom", and if you would say "he/she", use "who". "Who is that?" ... "He is the programmer." "To whom is the message addressed?" ... "It is addressed to him." He -> Who / Him -> Whom But who wouldn't say "Who is it addressed to?" You'd sound like the posh bloke from an Ealing Comedy if you used "whom" all the time.

ralph 16y ago
You might sound like Inspector Morse; he was repeatedly correcting Lewis. Here in England, "everyone" doesn't say "who" when they mean "whom".
- m0nty 16y ago
  What, that Ralph Corderoy, one-time of the PCG? You should be able to work out who I am from my username ;) Anyway, I can't remember when I last heard someone use "whom" outside of slightly cheesy television series like Morse...
  - ralph 16y ago
    Almost certainly that one. Mr Burns, is that you? You've had me accessing bits that hadn't been scrubbed in a long time and have suffered some rot. Have you just arrived at number 63 or just left? There's a Dorset LUG if you're interested. Morse can be cheesy, but I thought it was a cultural reference that Americans may know. :-)
    - m0nty 16y ago
      Sent email, rather than doing our correspondence here :] Left Dorset last year, now in Hampshire again.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  I've always used whom, but now I live in Canada I find myself missing it more often than I did in England. Perhaps it's just that I was taught when to use who and whom.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  The vast majority do, except when the word is preceded by a preposition. E,g: "Who is it addressed to?" versus "To whom is it addressed?"

jjcm 16y ago

Often times proper grammar isn't the best approach from a marketing standpoint. Look at apple's use of, "the funnest _ yet" slogans that they used for a while. Catering to the most commonly used vernacular is generally a better strategy from a marketing perspective. I'm going out on a limb here, but my bet is that the mistake is on purpose.

electromagnetic 16y ago
Depending on your target demographic obviously. If you're aiming for the general market then you're absolutely right, you'll hit more birds with your stones if you talk to people on their level. However, if you're aiming college grads or PhD grads, you're probably going to annoy them if you're letting grammatical errors enter your marketing. I've closed BBC news articles when there's been a grammatical mistake in the first paragraph. I didn't pay my License Fee in the UK for them to abuse it with bad news.
- waqf 16y ago
  I have to say that the BBC news has more spelling and grammar errors per thousand words than most blogs I read. ... now let me try desperately to bring this back on topic by saying that I think the thread above blaming Britain for grammatical prescriptivism is way off. Strunk and White popularized some prescriptions unknown in the UK (such as not using "which" in the role of "that") and in my thoroughly anecdotal experience Americans spell [by the conventions of the country they're in] significantly better than Brits do.
ralph 16y ago
Maybe Twitter should consider changing to "Whom to follow" as the quirkiness would stand out to those unfamiliar with "whom". May help partially offset the slight staidness.
alxp 16y ago
Think different(ly).

petercooper 16y ago

William Safire said it best: "The best rule for dealing with who vs. whom is this: Whenever whom is required, recast the sentence. This keeps a huge section of the hard disk of your mind available for baseball averages." Put this in the "most people don't care" bin along with the subjunctive mood, which I see intelligent people failing to use more often than not.

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
See also less vs. fewer.
Terretta 16y ago
I wish I were in a subjunctive mood.

wccrawford 16y ago

I'm not convinced that it should be 'whom'. It's a sentence fragment. It's not a subject or an object of a sentence. Replacing 'who' with 'he' or 'him' makes no sense either way. And lastly: It's not a novel or paper. It's just a quick phrase used artistically. With 'whom' is sounds stuffy and out of place. 'Who' sounds correct in the context, and hits the target audience.

ralph 16y ago
You test with "he" versus "him" in the reply to the question, not by replacing "who/whom" in the question itself. So the answer to "whom to follow" is "follow him", not "follow he".

omaranto 16y ago

I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the who/whom distinction in North American English has been ignored so much for a long enough period of time to say that ignoring it is now correct. On the other hand, the distinction is still commonly observed in British English, I think. So basically Victoria Coren is asking twitter to rewrite things in her dialect. I guess she's free to ask. And maybe they should do some internationalization...

liedra 16y ago
Just because lazy people in North America couldn't be bothered working it out any more doesn't mean Twitter shouldn't set a good example. Ignoring it is not correct, the distinction is correct. It's not a dialect, either, given that it's, uh, the original.
- viraptor 16y ago
  Given that there already is an official distinction between "American English" and "British English", I don't think your comment is very correct. It might be just another rule to add (actually remove) in the A.E. schoolbooks. Languages evolve. If enough people drop "whom" in America, arguing about this change would be like arguing about whether sweets or candy is "correct".
  - liedra 16y ago
    This still doesn't make it a dialect though :) Sorry, but it just annoys me to see American English fanatics say how British English is "wrong", or a "dialect" of American English when it was the original base of American English to start with :) I do agree with you, languages evolve. But that doesn't mean we should just drop grammar altogether. I was a little snappy in my original response, and I apologise for that, but the sentiment is still the same.
    - nollidge 16y ago
      Saying American English evolved from British English is just as false as the reverse, and just as false as saying humans evolved from monkeys. Both evolved from a common ancestor. British English has changed just as much as American English has since they began to split in the 17-18th centuries.

languagehacker 16y ago

As a linguist, I can say resolutely that your prescriptivism is basically pounding your fists against the immovable brick wall of change. All types of case are rapidly disappearing from English. It's a continuing trend and has been for hundreds of years. The ambiguity generated is a trade-off people make for a variety of conveniences, let alone to fit in. The subjunctive mood is basically gone from practiced speech, too. None of it is terribly worth lamenting. In fact, changing it to "whom" would do nothing more than alienate its large-scale market, who aren't all leather elbow pads and Strunk & White, but rather real people who exercise language outside of the confines of a book report. Sorry, dude. It's just not worth getting bent out of shape about.

theycallmemorty 16y ago
There's a joke in there about language being dynamic and you referring to @VictoriaCohen (clearly female) as a 'dude'.
- jsharpe 16y ago
  "Dude" has been unisex for a while now. It would be almost offensive (not to mention dated) to call someone a "dudette".
Hexstream 16y ago
The immovable brick wall of change? That doesn't sound right...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- boredguy8 16y ago
  I think that's the point. Good writing often doesn't make sense on a literal level. Apart from this, my favorite example from recently: "and with Kevin Garnett and the newly-signed Jermaine O’Neal, Danny Ainge has just successfully assembled the greatest collection of big men in the history of 2002." http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-harangody-boston-and-gathering.html http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-harangody-boston-...

kmfrk 16y ago

It doesn't bother me on an American website. On a British website, I would notice it, but foregoing "whom" is an old American tradition.

waqf 16y ago
I wouldn't point this out in a discussion on any other topic (honest), but you mean "forgoing" (going without), not "foregoing" (previous).
- kmfrk 16y ago
  Thanks for the disambiguation. HN keeps me posting at the weirdest hours of the day for some reason.

anamax 16y ago

If the fans of BE want to win these things, they need to work on the Indians, not the Americans. (The US doesn't look to the UK for language lessons. We fight amongst ourselves.) Of course, even winning the "world-wide English" wars may not be enough to influence Americans. BTW - Does French or German have these problems?

tjarratt 16y ago
I can't speak on the issue of the German language, but France has the Académie Française, whose job it is to standardize the language and approve new changes. They carry no legal clout, but where they go, the french language usually follows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Functions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Fu...
- avibryant 16y ago
  The "French language" may follow, but the Quebecois sure don't... (so, yes, French has exactly the same issue).

jcsalterego 16y ago

The same goes for Facebook's blatant abuse of the neuter singular "their" instead of "his/her" -- which really can be resolved most of the time since Facebook usually possess people's genders. Anyway...