Hey Sars!

Dear Grammateur,

Just a quick note here, for the continuing good of my eyeballs: the word is spelled “GRAMMAR,” folks. Two As. Kelsey GrammEr; English grammAr. Okay? Thanks.

Now to your questions. I find that “whom” is overused, actually, in the same fashion that people say things like “it’s between he and I” — it’s an overcorrection based on their parents and teachers correcting them endlessly as kids not to start sentences with “me and Sharon went to the blah blah” while not explaining why it’s wrong.

With that said, if it’s called for, you do still need to use “whom” so as not to appear ig’nant. “Whom” is, as you say, used as an object — of a verb, a preposition, or an infinitive. You do have to take a moment and think about whether it’s called for; the “whom” mistake I see most frequently is an overcorrection in appositive clauses, like so: “Wing Chun, whom I knew would like that movie, is pretty.” This is incorrect; Wing is the subject of the clause, and therefore “who” is correct, not “whom.”

Another “who”/”whom” pitfall: linking verbs. When using linking verbs, “who”/”whom” follows the same rule as “I”/”me” — we don’t write “whom it is” for the same reason we don’t write “it is me” (“who it is” and “it is I” are correct). Linking verbs take a nominative.

This makes it sound much more complicated than it actually is in practice — an unfortunate aspect of usage terminology is that it’s kind of exclusive, which leads to accusations of snobbery and puts people off examining the language, and that’s a pity. In any case, your instincts regarding the usage are correct, but you can’t just opt out of following the rule. Take an extra second, decide whether you need a subject or an object, and apply the correct pronoun.

And now, commas. Neither example you cite is incorrect. You’re supposed to use commas to separate independent clauses, so the first sentence is fine; in the second sentence, it’s pretty much to your taste. Problems only arise when people use commas to provide dialogue emphasis when usage dictates that no comma belongs there, and in more colloquial or creative work, that’s fine, but it’s not strictly correct.

Dear Sars,

Dear L.,

I agree with you. I don’t think it’s incorrect without a punctuation mark there, but as I’ve said before, rules of grammar exist for the sake of clarity, and a dash or a colon after “Defendant” signals more clearly that a complex list is about to begin.

If His Honor insists on no punctuation there, lobby for semicolons instead of colons to split up the list items; a semicolon is a bigger pause than a comma and separates the list items more emphatically.

“Farther” or “further”? Is there a difference? If so, when do you use which?

Dear Heh, You Said “Lay,”

Ladies and germs, I believe we have a new record for the shortest Vine letter ever. I don’t think I’ll ever see a shorter one, actually, unless someone just writes to me all, “Help!” and doesn’t sign it.

Anyhoodle: I seem to recall that there’s a rule, exceedingly picayune in nature, that distinguishes between the two words, with one word referring to physical distance and the other a more metaphorical measure of elapsed space and/or time. Let’s see if I’m right…

Mostly. The 11C’s usage note under “farther” remarks that the two “have been used more or less interchangeably throughout most of their history, but currently they are showing signs of diverging. … [W]here there is no notion of distance, further is used…. Further is also used as a sentence modifier [i.e. “further, the participants felt that”]…but farther is not. … Farther is taking over the meaning of distance…and further the meaning of addition.”

But if someone asks which red car is yours and you reply, “The further one,” I don’t think that’s wrong; you just don’t use the word “farthermore” because, you know, it doesn’t exist. In other words, there’s no real need to remember the distinction because it’s already built into the language.

Garner is a little firmer on the distinction — “[i]n the best usage, farther refers to physical distances, further to figurative [ones]” — but I wouldn’t be that strict about it. Again, the language sort of chooses the right one for you.

Hi Sars:

Dear I Feel You,

It does look odd, but there isn’t really any leeway to the rule aside from a consistent editorial decision to put journal names in quotation marks instead of in italics (The New Yorker still follows that style). Failing that, just invert the sentence so the italicized phrases aren’t next to each other: “E. lusitanica should be destroyed when it is encountered, as per Heather Clipings.” That phrasing is inelegant, but if it’s really maddening to the reader to have the italicized phrases adjacent to one another, it’s the only real solution.

Here’s another one for the Grammar Queen. A grammar
debate ensued in
our office over the following:

Dear A,

Yes, it should have been “whom.” See above; it’s the object of a preposition.

“Said sister” is closer in meaning to what you want, but “my wife’s said sister” is really clunky…although that’s just the way with legal documents sometimes, that euphony is sacrificed to explication.

You can probably get around it in this case with a well-placed “hereafter ‘sister-in-law,'” and then just say “said sister-in-law,” which, because it’s a hyphenate, acts as a single word and therefore can’t put you in the position of mixing the modifier.

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