“Someone was going to hire Michael Vick. And whomever it was, was going to get a good QB cheap”
Don’t fret about the passive voice or other errors. I’m only concerned about the use of who(m)ever. I wrote the sentence informally on Facebook. A petty FOAF whom I do not know said my usage was incorrect. His reasoning was off, but I suspect he’s right. When I re-read it, it seems that “whomever” was the antecedent and should’ve been “whoever.”
Which is right?
I’d said “whoever”. That’s partly because “whomever” always sounds pedantic, and partly because if you are being strictly traditional in your grammar “whoever” or “whomever” is predicative to the verb “was”, and pedants use the nominative case there anyway.
He should have been more concerned about the use of “cheap” instead of “cheaply”!
Seriously - it’s Facebook. Just be happy half the words aren’t misspelled, as they are in most other posts on there!
“Whoever”
Easy on that Pedant stuff…
“whoever” is a better choice for the OP’s question.
See here for a nice guideline: Whoever vs. Whomever | Grammar Rules
But in the **Chief Pedant’s **opinion, “whomever” should depart the language permanently. It’s not worth parsing out the difference, although it does make a nice pastime for regular pedants.
The easy way:
And whomever it was, {HE/HIM} was going to get a good QB cheap
“him was going” sounds terrible. So it’s not the accusative case. (Note the -M.)
“he was going” sounds fine. He is the subject case, as is who, so (as the others said) “whoever it was” is great.
In general, if you choose “who” where “whom” is correct, you’ll sound informal. If you choose “whom” where “who” is correct, you’ll sound like you’ve been poorly educated.
No, I’d use non-gender-specific language, as well as “whoever”:
And whoever it was, they were going to get a good QB cheap.
:smack: Adjective/adverb confusion is one of my grammar pet peeves. I can’t believe I did that. I blame it on late night facebooking.