Word Confusion: Who ‘Dat??

That and who are both subject and/or object pronouns. Who is used only when referring to people (yeah, I think animals are people, too) while that can be used for people, things, and animals.

I have a strong personal preference toward using who in any situation that involves people or animals while reserving that for things—or people or animals for whom I have no respect.

It’s a personal choice between being respectful (in my opinion) and being easy.

Refers to People
Part of Grammar: Relative pronouns introduce relative adjectival clauses.
Who Subject or object pronoun for people I told you about the woman who lives next door.
Whose Possessive for people, animals, and things Do you know the boy whose mother is a nurse?
Whom Object pronoun for people

Colloquially, who is generally used

I was invited by the professor whom I met at the conference.
Refers to Things
That Subject or object pronoun for people, animals, and things in defining relative clauses which could also use who or which I don’t like the table that stands in the kitchen.

Technically, you can also say:
I told you about the woman that lives next door.

Which Subject or object pronoun for animals and things.

It can also refer to a whole sentence.

Do you see the cat which is lying on the roof?

He couldn’t read which surprised me.


C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan…which words are your pet peeves?


Kathy Davie is an author, educator, and artist with a BS in Technical Writing & Editing with minors in Digital Media and History from Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado

She is the author of the arts marketing series, Your Portfolio & You, aimed at helping artists survive (and thrive) at the business of being an artist and include Accounting for the SMALL Businessperson, How Copyright Applies to the Artist, the Buyer, the Employer/e, the Sold Artwork, Dealing with Photographs, Slides, Digital Images, and Surviving the Outdoor Arts Festival.

A huge believer in knowledge being power, Kathy has begun a free set of Author Tools for authors interested in self-editing including an online tutorial in Using Microsoft Word’s Markup Tool, words commonly confused by authors and Punctuation and Formatting Tips.

Contact Kathy for various writing and editing services or explore her artwork.

About KD Did It

Writer, editor, artist insatiable for research and learning. A dedicated reader, who, when in copyedit-mode, reads every word on a page with an obsessive eye for detail.
This entry was posted in Writing and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Word Confusion: Who ‘Dat??

  1. ErikaT says:

    Subject/obect pronouns still stump me on occassion. Only practice can really drive it home.

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s