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Is it grammatically correct to use "among whom" in the sentence that follows and if not, then what's the alternative?

79% of the students didn't participate in these projects among whom 45% didn't hear about the project courses before.

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    No, you shouldn't do that. Instead of "... projects among whom ...", you should write "... projects; among those, ...". Note the punctuation: projects ends with a full stop semicolon, and there's a comma after those.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 19:37
  • This question is a basic question about the use of whom which if not a duplicate belongs elsewhere, i.e. SE English Language Learners. If you wish to know what sort of questions are accepted here, please follow the Introductory Tour and consult the help.
    – David
    Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 19:49
  • Can you be more specific about what you want to learn? As David mentions, the use of "whom" vs "who" in this context is basic and covered by existing questions such as What’s the rule for using “who” and “whom” correctly? Also, your sentence has a basic punctuation error: a relative cause like this should be preceded by a comma. But is there anything else that you wanted to know about (e.g. are you unsure if it's OK to "extrapose" the relative clause to the right of "didn't participate in these projects")?
    – herisson
    Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 20:37
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    One of the least attractive aspects of this very interesting site is the tendency of some commentators to fuss about the suitability of a question for the site, rather than answering the question.
    – Anton
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 6:58
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    I agree with @JohnLawler that a writer should not do that, and that his suggestion for improvement is a sound one. But I am not sure the problems are, strictly speaking, grammatical ones. One is typographical: don't start a sentence with a Hindu-Arabic numeral since you cannot capitalize it. The other is mathematical, an ambiguity whether the "45%" means 45% of the whole set of students under consideration, or 45% of the subset that "didn't participate in these projects," which then would be only 35.55% of the whole set. (John Lawler is assuming the latter, which indeed is the more likely.)
    – Brian Donovan
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 15:24

2 Answers 2

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Is it grammatically correct to use "among whom" in the sentence that follows and if not, then what's the alternative?

No, primarily because--I do not intent to be unkind in saying this--the sentence has so many problems that deciding on the proper pronoun must wait. (And you might not even need to use a pronoun if you write a better sentence).

Here are some of the problems:

  • You refer to 'projects' and 'project courses'. Which is it?
    • Are you referring to a project that is one component of a course?
    • Or are you referring to a course about projects, e.g., a project management course?
    • Or are you referring to a research project that is not associated with a specific course?

You need to clarify the relationship between the percentages given.

  • Is it 49% 45% of the 79%, which equals 38.71% 35.55% of the total sample?

  • Or is it that 49% 45% of the total sample did not know about the project/course, and the other 30% did not participate for other reasons.

Do not begin a sentence with a numeral. Write 'Seventy-nine percent' not '79%'.

Edit: I quoted the incorrect percentage, so I corrected it. (6 Jul 2017 @ 21:52 UTC)
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  • Doesn't the 'among whom' say the OP is trying to show the 49% comes out of the 79% group?
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 3:42
  • Probably, but the confusion between 'projects', 'courses', and 'project courses' makes it less clear. In addition, when discussing statistical results like these, it's important to be crystal clear.
    – Mark D Worthen PsyD
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 14:59
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    I don't feel like this really answers the question posed; you're just making complaints about unrelated parts of the sentence.
    – herisson
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 22:03
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Despite trivial grammatical and logical errors, the meaning of the sentence is clear. There is no confusion between students (who hear) and projects (who do not hear). I agree with those who point out that there is a relative clause that should at least be preceded by a comma. It does not matter if the sentence starts with words or numbers; starting a sentence with words may be desirable stylistically or conventionally but in this case I have a clear preference for number, because the sentence is about the comparison of two numbers. We should assume the sentence is taken from a context and thus we do not need to know details of courses. 45% (not 49% as one commentator says) of 79% is an irrational number and this cannot represent an integer number of students, so there is no ambiguity; what is meant is that, in each 79, 45 had not heard of the courses that pertained to the projects.

Having set aside many of the tangential pedantic criticisms of other commentators, let me add my opinion on the who/whom question. I feel "among whom" to be correct, or at least acceptable. I am not a professional linguist or etymologist but I know that English retains many features of Germanic languages. In this case "whom" is related to German "wem", which is used after prepositions that demand the dative or accusative case. I feel that "among" is such a preposition. As an editor, I would therefore correct "among who", which is incorrect, to among "whom".

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  • The percentages could just be rounded to the nearest hundredth.
    – herisson
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 20:12
  • <blockquote>It does not matter if the sentence starts with words or numbers; starting a sentence with words may be desirable stylistically or conventionally but in this case I have a clear preference for number, because the sentence is about the comparison of two numbers.</blockquote>
    – Mark D Worthen PsyD
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 22:13
  • It does not matter if the sentence starts with words or numbers; starting a sentence with words may be desirable stylistically or conventionally but in this case I have a clear preference for number, because the sentence is about the comparison of two numbers. The following style guides indicate that one should not begin a sentence with a numeral: Chicago, APA, MLA, Harvard, BlueBook, Turabian. This is a forum for proper English usage, not "usage according to Anton", therefore your personal opinion does not carry as much weight as well-established manuals of style.
    – Mark D Worthen PsyD
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 22:19
  • @MarkWorthen: However, the question is about grammaticality, not style
    – herisson
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 22:24
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    @Anton - Thank you for correcting me. You are right, the OP wrote 45%, not 49%.
    – Mark D Worthen PsyD
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 22:24

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