The Travails of Him Who is the Object of Something

Roger Wilco said:
Would we say, the travails of he?
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"Whom" is the correct object relative pronoun here. But we're taking about a title, which doesn't require grammatical correctness. If you want to really parse it out, we may need the rest of the sentence, since all we have is a noun phrase.
 
(Nothing on POA requires grammatical correctness. I figured that, if a thread about something everyone knows how to do, like conduct a visual approach, fly a traffic pattern, what to say on the radio, et al., can generate multiple pages of replies, then a thread about this arcane feature of our lingua franca might make for good sport.)

Yes, it is a noun phrase as there is no finite main verb. In standard, formal English, the pronoun serves as the object of the preposition "of" and therefore the objective pronoun "him" would be correct. Who is [name] is a restrictive relative clause that modifies "him."

Further research shows that, in timys longe yore, it would indeed have been acceptable to use "he" instead of "him," and some online grammar check tools will accept either in the context of this fragment. Of course, online grammar check tools were not available in 1970, so with grudging respect for Mrs. Hofschulte I'm going to stick with him. Meanwhile, I'll be searching for my battered 20th Century reference volume of Strunk and White.
 
Lindberg said:
Again, the problem is not your use of "him," but your use of "who" with it.
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I think it's use of both who and is. But the point remains.
Roger Wilco said:
Nope. Not the problem.
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If you think "I don't know who him is" is correct, ok. I think both @Lindberg and I see a gramattical difference between:
"I dont know him" and​
"I don't know who he is."​
 
(oops, forgot the first line): The Travails of Him who is Roger Wilco

Q: What is this thread about?

A: This thread is about travails. [Travails is the subject.]

Q: What travails?

A: The travails of him. [Of him is a prepositional phrase that identifies whose travails they are, and the objective pronoun him must be used here because it is the object of the preposition of.* Therefore, this fragment is grammatically correct. So we know that the travails are those of "him," but we don't know who "him" is.]

Q: Who is "him?"

A: "Him" refers to Roger Wilco. [Who is Roger Wilco is the restrictive relative clause that identifies "him." The word who is not the subject. So, the travails of him who is Roger Wilco is a fragment, but it's a grammatically correct fragment.]

Q: Couldn't you have just written, this thread is about the travails of Roger Wilco?

A: Of course. But what's the fun in that?

*Edit to add: The requirement for agreement between the preposition and its object is not altered by the addition of a restrictive relative clause.
 
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Rebooting the following thread which was amusing enough that I remembered it 8 years later-

timwinters

Thread 'Pedants please note...'

...take your overly anal retentive aggressions out on the FAA and leave the rest of us the f*** alone!

FAA Safety Team | Safer Skies Through Education
You have asked us to notify you when a webinar is scheduled that meets your criteria. The following webinar may be of interest to you:

"Inside View to a Flight Review"
Topic: Biennial flight review requirements, what pilot can expect from his or her flight review, and how a pilot can prepare.
On Monday, July 2, 2018 at 11:00 Mountain Daylight Time (10:00 PDT, 12:00 CDT, 13:00 EDT, 07:00 HST, 09:00...
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Rebooting the following thread which was amusing enough that I remembered it 8 years later-

timwinters

Thread 'Pedants please note...'

...take your overly anal retentive aggressions out on the FAA and leave the rest of us the f*** alone!

FAA Safety Team | Safer Skies Through Education
You have asked us to notify you when a webinar is scheduled that meets your criteria. The following webinar may be of interest to you:

"Inside View to a Flight Review"
Topic: Biennial flight review requirements, what pilot can expect from his or her flight review, and how a pilot can prepare.
On Monday, July 2, 2018 at 11:00 Mountain Daylight Time (10:00 PDT, 12:00 CDT, 13:00 EDT, 07:00 HST, 09:00...
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Yeah, that was a good one. And to think that we owe it all to a pedant.

Funny though, you can address all sorts of misinformation regarding virtually any topic on the Internet—aerodynamics, barbecue, college football, IFR procedures, electric cars, you name it. But just mention some matter related to spelling, grammar, or punctuation, even in jest, and the knives come out.

While I don’t much care for silly little face thingies, in this case, ;).
 
pedant contrarianism has been the glue that keeps message boards from becoming stale usernet archives. 5x1 signal is the feature, not the bug. Repeat after me: "En-ga-ment-far-ming". :fingerwag:
 
“Few things concentrate the mind more efficiently than the necessity of saying what you mean. It brings you face to face with what you are talking about, what you are actually proposing. It gets you away from the catch phrases that not merely substitute for thought but preclude it.”

- Edwin Newman

Nauga,
strictly speaking
 
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