“Who” refers to People, Right?

…and “that” refers to non-people. At least that’s what I learned in English class. Then I ran into this:

Volunteers looking for abandoned animals in rural North Carolina came across a cow who had escaped her flooded barn, but was having a hard time staying afloat in deep storm surge.

and this:

After what was surely a traumatic experience, the cow, nicknamed Ricky, settled into her new cushy life at a New Jersey animal sanctuary alongside another cow who had been rescued from Hurricane Harvey

and this:

It’s unclear what will happen to the cows who were swept out to sea this fall.

These are from a Washington Post article about some cattle washed out to sea by a hurricane. (See how I avoided using “who” there?)

It happened three times, so I don’t think this usage was an accident. I confess, using “who” feels, um, closer to the animals, as if treating them as individuals.

Maybe we can do this when we refer to our pets, too, eh?

Oh yes. A picture:

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First speech bubble. It’s correct!

That “whom” sounds wrong because we’re used to hearing the subject of the sentence first. That ‘whom’ is really the object of “of.” You can also say that the “whom” is introducing the noun clause that’s the direct object of “know”!

To fix the word order a bit, you’d have:

Do you know of whom she reminds me?

Of course now you have a rather awkward question. I fear that “who” will become the only form to appear at the beginning of a sentence regardless of the word’s function in the sentence.

PS—If it were me, I’d write. “Hey! She reminds me of someone I knew.”

PPS—Since I ran into it today, here’s a strip that gets it wrong twice. Second panel:

PPPS—And here’s one where he gets it right. First panel.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

First the comic…

Two lessons here. Maybe three.

• First: first panel. She’s actually asking “Who is it?” That’s correct. “Who” is the subject of the implied sentence.
• Next: third panel. He misstates her question, but “whom” is okay in his sentence. “Whom” is the object of the preposition.
• Finally: Her displeasure is appropriate, I suppose, but she should have used “who” because it’s the subject of the sentence.

I guess the moral is to be careful about whom you play video games with.

The rule:

• “Who” refers to people
• “That” doesn’t.

Here’s a good illustration of why this matters:

Is he referring to the ex-wife or to the phone message? Ambiguity is bad except in poetry and lies.

A writing tip: pronouns are supposed to refer to the closest possible antecedent. That’s why I avoid pronouns. Too easy to lose track of the antecedent.

These are possible alternative sentences:

• …message from an anonymous ex-wife who told me…
• An anonymous ex-wife sent me a message that told me…
• An anonymous ex-wife told me…

I suppose I could add that the doctor appears to be violating patient confidentiality.

Let’s start with some rules

• An antecedent is a word toward the front of a sentence that a word farther along in the sentence (called the proform) refers to.
• Antecedents and proforms have to agree, which means they have the same grammatical form (both have to be singular or both plural, for example.)
• “Who” refers to people, “that” refers to non-people

Here are two examples, both from this article:

This news organization sat down with Crandall at Attivo’s headquarters to discuss the company’s work for customers, which include consumer-goods companies, tech firms, law offices, and government agencies.

Okay, is it the comany’s work or the company’s customers that’s included? It’s the customers! Even besides the list making sense as a list of customers, both “customers” and the proform, “include” are plural. So the grammar tells you, too.

There is this very advanced set of attackers that will use all sorts of social engineering to figure out how to get around the security systems.

“That” goes with non-humans, right? And attackers are human, right? So it should be “who will use etc.” right? But “set” is a math term, right? Non-human, right? Well… the context indicates that this is a set of humans, so I think “who” is still appropriate. (And “will use” can be either singular or plural, so that’s no help.) But that’s the editor in me.

What does the editor in you say?