Remember Johnnie Cochran, the powerful attorney who led the defense team for OJ Simpson? He was good, really good. And he used good grammar.

One of his most powerful statements, actually a rhetorical question to the jury, was, “Who’s fooling who?” I admit that I was encouraged when I heard him say that.

“Who” is starting to abandon the English language, I suspect, because a lot of people don’t know what it means or how to use it. Those who do are sometimes considered snooty by those who don’t, as wearing a suit and tie to a ball game can be considered snooty by those who are dressed in shorts. Using “who” is not snobby; it is right. Let’s see “who” and “who”, what they mean and how they are used.

1. Use “Who”

“Who” is a subject pronoun. This means that “who” does something. “Who” has an action and is followed by a verb. “One way to check if” who “is the correct word is to replace it (temporarily) with the word” He “or” She “, which are also Subject Pronouns.

Examples:

“There is the man who stole my cookie!“(” Who “is the subject of” stole “;” stole “).

“Who wants to buy me another cookie? “(” Who “is the subject of” wants “;” he wants “).

2. Using “Who”

“Who” is an object pronoun. This means that “Who” is the recipient of an action or completes a prepositional sentence. One way to check if “who” is the correct word is to (temporarily) replace it with the word “he” or “she”, which are also object pronouns.

Examples:

“Officer, my cookie was stolen, but I don’t know by whom. “(” Who “is the object of the preposition” by “;” by him “).

“I’m looking for the cookie thief who did you not see. “(” Whose object is “you didn’t see”; “you didn’t see it”).

3. Where this gets complicated

The “who / who” can initiate an object clause. For example, consider this sentence: “I gave my cookie to the man wearing a red tie.” “The man who / who wore a red tie” is an object of “a”. So which one do you choose? Actually, the answer is quite simple. Look up the verbs in the sentence first and then locate your subjects. The subject of the verb “used” is “who / who”. Since we need a subject here, we use the subject pronoun “Who”. So, we have “I gave my cookie to the man who he wore a red tie. “

Another way to decide is to identify the clauses in a sentence. This sentence has the clause “I gave my cookie to the man” and “Who wore a red tie”. The first clause has the subject-verb combination of “I gave”, and the second has the subject-verb combination “who used”. Again, we see that “Who” is the subject of the clause, so we need the subject pronoun. This also becomes tricky when the Subject-verb-object order is interrupted, such as when revising sentences so that they do not end in prepositions. For example, consider this sentence: “Who will I give my cookie to?” “Who” seems to be in the position of subject as subject of “shall”. However, “who” is the object of the preposition “a”. Another way to write this sentence (wrong) is “Will I give my cookie to whom?” Now the “who” and “who” selection seems pretty obvious.

On the other hand, in the sentence “Who will buy my cookie?” “who” serves as the “will buy” theme, which is why we use “who” and not “who”. In this sentence, as in the previous examples, finding the verbs will help you decide which one to use.

4. Quick summary

who: Subject, can be replaced by other subject pronouns, such as “he” and “she”

Who: Object, can be replaced by other object pronouns, such as “he” and “she”

5. A final note

Sometimes we get questions about “whoever” and “whoever”. These two words follow the same rules as “who” and “who.” You can correctly write: “Whoever has the cookie can give it to whoever they want.” “Who” is the subject of “has”, and “whoever” is the object of “chooses” (as in “he chooses whoever”).