Who versus whom: keep the relationship together.
A small grammatical distinction can make a relationship visible. The preposition identifies the relationship and “whom” marks the object. My recommendation keeps those two words together.
By Adam Frick · First draftEnglish needs a grammar that serves readers who learned the language through different routes. By a “non-native grammar”, I mean a deliberate approach to shared English that does not treat native-speaker intuition as the final authority. A convention earns a place in that approach through the work the convention performs. The distinction between “who” and “whom” gives us a useful starting point.
Keep the pair together.
Do you know who those are for?
Do you know for whom those are?
The first question leaves the relationship word “for” until the end. The second question introduces “for whom” as a unit, before the reader reaches “those”. The pronoun “whom” functions as the object of “for”. Neither question identifies the objects represented by “those”, so both questions still need a shared context. My revision changes the grammatical organisation, not the amount of factual information supplied.
I recommend keeping the preposition beside “whom” in this kind of writing. In my teaching, I notice that writers can lose one of the words when the pair becomes separated, or choose “who” instead of “whom”. That observation concerns native speakers as well as learners. I offer the pairing as a practical safeguard, not as a measured guarantee that every reader will understand more quickly.
Find the construction outside the classroom.
Accountability is between a duty holder and a person or organisation to whom a duty is owed
The phrase “to whom” identifies the recipient of the duty. The preposition remains beside the pronoun instead of moving to the end of the clause. This published example shows the construction doing a real job in public information. I would retain that pairing.
Choose the role before choosing the word.
Who contacted the editor?
Whom did the editor contact?
The first question asks for the subject of “contacted”. The second asks for the object, while “the editor” supplies the subject. Cambridge Dictionary defines “whom” through that object role, including objects of prepositions. An embedded clause needs the same care: “Who do you think will attend?” retains “who” because the person is the subject of “will attend”. Proximity to another verb does not automatically make a pronoun an object.
Ordinary English often uses “who” in object positions, and a final preposition is not inherently ungrammatical. Cambridge’s discussion of relative clauses recognises that usage and associates the fronted preposition with formality. My recommendation asks a different question: which pattern should we teach when explicit relationships are the priority? I favour a consistent pairing that a writer can recognise and check, while acknowledging that the result may sound more formal.
Find a question or relative clause containing a preposition and a reference to a person. Identify the role of the person, then check whether the preposition belongs with “whom”. Keep the pair together when that construction expresses your meaning. A useful grammatical choice should make the relationship available to the reader.