Commonly Confused Words in English: WHO – WHOM – WHOSE

Learn Commonly Confused Words in English.

How to Use Who, Whom and Whose Correctly.

To understand how to use ‘who’, ‘whom’ and ‘whose’ you first have to understand the difference between subjects, objects and possessives.

The subject does the action:

• He likes football.
• She goes to university.
• They enjoy travelling.

The object receives the action:

• The employees respect him.
• I know her.
• The sailors waved to us.

Possessives tell us the person something belongs to:

• His car is new.
• I like his latest novel.
• We returned to our hotel.

Confused Words: WHO – WHOM – WHOSE

1. ‘Who’ is a subject pronoun like ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’. We use ‘who’ to ask which person did an action or which person is in a certain state.

• Who made the birthday cake?
• Who is in the bathroom?
• Who is going to the market this afternoon?

2. ‘Whom’ is an object pronoun like ‘him’, ‘her’ and ‘us’. We use ‘whom’ to ask which person received an action.

• Whom are going to ask to Mary’s party this evening?
• Whom did they choose as a team leader?
• Whom did he blame for the accident?

3. “Whose” is a possessive pronoun like ‘his’, and ‘our’. We use ‘whose’ to find out which person something belongs to.

• Whose bag is this?
• Whose cell phone keeps ringing?
• Whose dog is barking outside?

WHO – WHOM – WHOSE | Image