The Difference Between Nominative and Objective

English Doesn’t have case the way many other languages do. We don’t name dative case and accusative case, we just say “objective case.” We also don’t say “nominative case” (but that’s changing). I remember my teacher calling it the “subjective” case because the word was the subject of the sentence. Just the same, we do have some inflectional endings; perhaps the most notorius is the “m” in “who-whom.” Hence the comic:

The owl is correct—”who” is for subjects (and predicate nominatives), “whom” is for direct objects and objects of prepositions.

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We grammar curmudgwons tend to like “whom” as the first word in a sentence because it’s often a direct object, even though it doesn’t feel like it. This sentence is different! First word in the second line:

Rearrange the words to put the main clause at the beginning: “You had no idea who was even running…” Yes, this “who” is the subject of the subordinate clause, so it’s correct!

Most folks write “who” when it’s the first word in the sentence, even though it should be “whom” when it’s not the subject.

“Whom” here is a direct object; “I” is the subject. (The comic is rather large, and this is only the first panel. Click the link if you want to see the whole thing.)

Yes, yes, the technical term is concision, but that’s not the word people use, except for us pretentious professionals. The word means to take out unnecessary words. Taking out the three unnecessary words here solves two problems. First panel:

Take out “was it that” and you have a much cleaner sentence, and it fixes two errors.

• Use “who,” not “that” when you refer to people.
• “It,” as spoken in the sentence, is a meaningless predicate nominative. Bad.

So just ask, “Who said ‘I’m not young enough to know everything?’ “

Because we have direct object, that’s why! The humor is that he’s questioning who is doing the watching, and who is being watched. IOW, he should say “Who’s watching whom?”. The way it’s written, he’s merely repeating his question without saying what they’re watching.