Question

Choose the pronoun that is appropriate for the given sentence;
About ________ is the newspaper article?
A) who
B) whom
C) which
D) that

Answer 1

Hint: We know that pronouns are mainly used to substitute a noun. Once we read the sentence we understand that the question is describing something or someone, but we need to see which pronouns from the given options the one that has the most sense for the sentence. Here most of the options can be eliminated easily, there will be a little confusion among two options, but overall concentrate on the meaning of the sentence.

Complete answer:
When we read the question and its possible options a couple of times, we will understand that the ‘article’ in the given sentence has to be about a person in the objective form since the article is subjective. Now we need to figure out which option suits describing a person as objective, the best.

A) Option (A) who: this is incorrect even though it is used to describe a person. But remember that ‘who’ can never be used after ‘about’, because ‘who’ can only be a subject pronoun, while here the person is objective.
B) Option (B) whom: this is correct, its because here ‘whom’ is able to describe the person in its objective form and its clearly put in connection with the subject that is ‘the article’.
C) Option (C) which: this is an incorrect answer, because ‘which’ is used when a group of things are given, and when a noun follows it, but here we are clearly only talking about a single person and no noun comes after it.
D) Option (D) that: this is incorrect since grammatically we can never use ‘that’ as an interrogative pronoun. So ‘that’ is automatically omitted.

Thus the correct answer is option ‘B’.

Note: Clearly we are aware that pronouns are used when we do not want to repeat the whole subject of again, rather shorten that word. A subject pronoun can be replaced by I, you, she, he or it. An object part on the other hand becomes me, you, her, him or it. Other types of pronouns like reflexive, demonstrative, possessive or interrogative are also used. Some common examples are; this, that, oneself, yourself, etc.