Five readers on whom I must rely

JUNE CASAGRANDE

The nice and not-so-nice thing about writing a grammar column is

this: No careless mistake, no typo, no minor flub goes unnoticed. And

unlike all the other writers who make tiny language errors in

articles about city budgets and school dance classes, I get no slack.

Understandably so.

On several occasions, readers have sent me notes to criticize

mistakes in this column -- only to learn that their criticisms were

wrong and that I was right all along. This is not one of those times.

Three readers of last week’s column busted me for writing, “The

media is obsessed.” “Media” is the plural of “medium,” as in “a

single news medium, many news media.” So that was a mistake, no two

ways around it. There’s actually a funny rule about the word “medium”

when you’re talking about clairvoyants. In that case, the plural is

“mediums,” not “media.” So I should have written, “The media are

obsessed.”

Two other readers pointed out in last week’s column the phrase, “

... people who you once relied on ... “ If I remember right, I had

started to write, “ ... people who used to help you ... “ then

changed my mind and started hitting the backspace key and just didn’t

back up far enough. For me, the rewording process is the biggest

source of mistakes. I often leave in an errant word and end up with

sentences that say things like, “has is” and “am will.” Of course,

those are also mistakes.

“Who” is a subject pronoun, reserved for times when “who” is

performing the action in the sentence. “He who expects this column to

be error-free is in for a big disappointment.” “Whom” is an object

pronoun, the person the action is being performed upon. In last

week’s phrase, “people who you once relied on,” the subject -- the

person performing the action -- is “you.” “You relied.” So the person

you’re relying on is the object: whom.

When in doubt about whether to use “who” or “whom,” you can always

perform this simple test. Isolate just the verb and the subject, “you

relied,” “he talked,” “the congress voted,” then plug in “him” and

“he” to see which works best. “You relied on he” or “you relied on

him”? “He talked to he” or “he talked to him”? “The congress voted

for he” or “the congress voted for him”? One is a subject, “he,” the

other is an object, “him.” So if “he” works best, use “who.” If “him”

is the right choice, use “whom.”

While the downside of writing a grammar column is that people

point out every mistake, the upside is that people who catch them are

very, very inclined to ask the following question: “Were you just

testing us?”

Uh, yeah. That’s what I was doing. Testing you.

Talk about undeserved benefit of the doubt.

So those of you who needed a refresher on those two matters can

thank the five readers who pointed out my mistake. Those who already

remembered those rules and would have rather learned how to conjugate

verbs for bands can blame the same five people, because that was

going to be today’s topic.

So because I’m almost out of space, I’ll be brief. I was pulling

my hair out the other day trying to find a written rule on whether

you say, “The Rolling Stones are a good band” or “The Rolling Stones

is a good band,” “Black Flag are coming in concert” or “Black Flag is

coming in concert.”

Though I distinctly remember a music editor once telling me that

bands should be conjugated in the singular, I could find no official

source on this.

I consulted three style guides, a Times Community News editor, an

L.A. Times editor, a Business Wire editor and a book editor -- all of

which got me bupkis.

So because the rule writers won’t help us on this one, I’m writing

my own rule, which goes something like this: Do whichever sounds the

most sensible. “The Rolling Stones are,” “Black Flag is.” And unless

five readers e-mail me to tell me I’ve again committed a horrible

oversight, that will be the official rule from now on.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].