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First, "whom" today is more or less reserved for formulaic usage. You write "To whom it may concern," but you don't say "Whom did you meet yesterday?" If yo
by einhverfr 14y ago
First, "whom" today is more or less reserved for formulaic usage. You write "To whom it may concern," but you don't say "Whom did you meet yesterday?" If you start rigidly using whom as objective (a use that Sapir noted was dying in 1912), you sound stilted and put people off. It's the sort of grammar nazi thing that alienates customers.
Similarly passive voice, split infinitives, etc. all sound like great rules until you realize that there are plenty of cases where these so-called rules are actually good to break. For example, perhaps his productivity would more than double if he would stop worrying about whether his employees split their infinitives.