CHAPTER II
SYNTAX
Case
There is not much opportunity in English for going wrong here, because we have shed most of our cases. The personal pronouns, and who and its compounds, are the only words that visibly retain three—called subjective, objective, possessive. In nouns the first two are indistinguishable, and are called the common case. One result of this simplicity is that, the sense of case being almost lost, the few mistakes that can be made are made often—some of them so often that they are now almost right by prescription.
1. In apposition.
A pronoun appended to a noun, and in the same relation to the rest of the sentence, should be in the same case. Disregard of this is a bad blunder.
But to behold her mother—she to whom she owed her being!—S. Ferrier.
2. The complement with am, are, is, &c., should be subjective.
I am she, she me, till death and beyond it.—Meredith.
Whom would you rather be?
To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first and sole angel visitant, him Easterns call Azrael.—C. Brontë.
That's him.
In the last but one, him would no doubt have been defended by the writer, since the full form would be he whom, as an attraction to the vanished whom. But such attraction is not right; if he alone is felt to be uncomfortable, whom should not be omitted; or, in this exalted context, it might be he that.
On that's him, see 4, below.
