For Whom the Bell Tolls

As you are most eminently aware, there is, for lack of a better word, much tumult regarding how to use "who" and "whom" in formal English writing. As for modern, colloquial speech, "who" has usurped all power as the dominant interrogatory pronoun of the two. Suffice it to say, it is still important to know how to use it in formal speech and writing so that it not pose as something deleterious to one's argument. With that said, here is an explanation of it below:

Subjective Pronouns: who
Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they

Who saw what happened here? Answer: I saw it.

Objective Pronouns: whom
Examples: me, you, him, her, it, us, them

Whom did you see? Answer: I saw him.

Possessive Pronouns: whose
Examples: my, your, his, her, its, our, their

Whose book is this? Answer: It's his book.

That is how it works in a nutshell. Remember that pronouns have to correspond with each other. For example, I shall create a sentence below that uses an interrogatory pronoun that does not correspond with the pronoun it has replaced. Below that, I shall give its redacted version:

Wrong: My beautiful mother, who I ardently love, has fallen ill.

Correct: My beautiful mother, whom I ardently love, has fallen ill.

If one were to remove the nonrestrictive clause, "whom I ardently love", the sentence would read, "My beautiful mother has fallen ill". This is the part that people have trouble with all of the time. They think that a restrictive or nonrestrictive clause that starts with "who[m]" must correlate with whatever it might be modifying. The problem with that is that they presuppose that it is modifying the subject of the sentence, which is "mother", thus it must be replaced with a subjective interrogatory pronoun [who]. This is incorrect because it is its own clause and "whom" is the direct object of the verb "love"; therefore, if one were to separate the nonrestrictive clause from the main clause, it would look like this:

whom I ardently love/I ardently love whom
I ardently love her
(One would not say I ardently love she, right?)
(In this instance, "whom" is "mother".)

There is a show on television called Paranormal State. The show is a reality series whereon camera crews follow these paranormal investigators as they search alleged haunted places. In the show, the lead investigator, Ryan, always asks this when he is trying to summon a spirit to answer:

I am speaking to whomever is in this house.

This irritates me because this is an error in which he is trying to be hypercorrect. He really should say:

I am speaking to [whoever is in this house.]

(One would replace "whoever" with a pronoun such as "he" so that it read, "he is in this house".)

The reason he is confused is that he is thinking that this is the indirect object of the present participle, "speaking", thus, "I am speaking to him". The fact is, though, that the preposition, "to" has opened up a prepositional phrase in this instance. The subject of the sentence is the interrogatory pronoun, thus it must be "whoever". No one would ever say, "him is in this house", right?

I hope that this might have helped. Remember, though, speaking informally and writing formal papers for your high school or college classes are two totally separate entities. You just have to know the difference and you will be fine.