Grammar 101 by Kathleen Sears

Author:Kathleen Sears
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adams Media

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An independent clause is a set of words with a subject and its verb that expresses a complete thought; it could stand alone as a sentence. A dependent clause—while having a subject and verb—makes no sense by itself; it can’t stand alone as a sentence.

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Now for a trickier example:

Eugene worried about (who, whom) Ike would be teamed with in the competition.

As you can tell, this sentence has two clauses (you could tell that, couldn’t you?). Remember that you’re only concerned with the clause that contains the who/whom question. In this case, take the words after about, scramble them to make a statement, substitute he or him, and you have “Ike would be teamed with him in the competition.” Since you used him, you would know that the original sentence would use whom (remember the mnemonic him = whom). So the original sentence would read this way:

Eugene worried about whom Ike would be teamed with in the competition.

Here’s another example that you have to stop and think about:

Was that (who, whom) you thought it was?

When you look only at the clause the who/whom is concerned with and you substitute he/him, you have “it was he/him.” A light bulb goes off in your head because you recognize that was is a linking verb. That tells you to use he (the predicate nominative).

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