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Particularly easy who vs. whom question?

I'm generally pretty good at grammar, but because I learned it somewhat instinctively, I never really got the hang of cases, or who vs. whom.

So...take the sentence "A man who(m) police believe has been responsible for..."

Who or whom, and why? This isn't homework help, I'm genuinely looking to understand the principle. Thanks so much!

Update:

Answers based on actual grammatical principle rather than smug anti-elitism are especially appreciated!

10 Answers

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  • Tuxman
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    This is how i learnt it: take the verb-believe.

    ask who or what believes? -the police. therefore the police is the subject.

    then say the police believes whom or what?- a man. a man is the object. therefore whom is the correct answer

  • 5 years ago

    you recognize I ought to circulate with my adult men, i think of that the Steelers will pull this one out. They constantly play greater appropriate against greater appropriate communities and that they are going to be out to instruct something this week easily. Eli is coming off of two undesirable weeks and that i'm able to't see him getting it going this week against a competent protection. i don't think of that this game would be a blowout because of the fact they are 2 working communities. easily they are the two philosophically an analogous group. So what this tournament-up will come all the way down to is can the Steelers supply up Jacobs and would the Giants supply up Ward. I supply this one to Ward each and every time, the Steelers are constantly great against the run and so are the Giants. All we ought to do is blanket Plax because of the fact he's the only one Eli likes to throw to and that i think of the game is ours. as properly Eli Vs. huge Ben, huge Ben wins each and every time, in line with probability they are going to see who extremely became the terrific QB out of that draft classification.

  • Elle
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    Whom. This site really helped me understand the difference:

    http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/who-versus-wh...

  • 1 decade ago

    It's really a question of formality vs informality. But normally you would use WHO when you are referring to the subject of a clause, and WHOM when you are referring to the object of a clause.

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  • 1 decade ago

    the correct grammatically is whom. who would be an english slang of whom which is derived from the true english usage

  • 1 decade ago

    whom is the correct way

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    use whom when it follows a preposition

  • 1 decade ago

    whom

  • 1 decade ago

    i thought the same thing as you. i think that "whom" is a more proper way to say "who". that's just my opinion.

  • 1 decade ago

    who

    whom sounds like something a posh person would say.

    'whom are you talkin about?'yeah, i wouldnt say that, lol.

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