If you picked "whomever" in last week's quiz, why did you do that?

"Well," you might have said to yourself, "whomever is for objects."

That's true. But consider this sentence: The boss said she'll recommend whoever/whomever performs best.

Would you make the same choice?

We can get two lessons out of last week's quiz. There's subjects and objects: Subjects carry out the verb of a sentence, while objects receive the action of the verb. In the sentence, "She will recommend him," "she" is the subject and "him" is the object.

But that's not why "whomever" is correct. Here are two correct sentences:

The boss said she'll recommend whomever Chris suggests.

The boss said she'll recommend whoever performs best.

The last part of each sentence is a noun clause. And when you have a noun clause, you isolate the noun clause when you're choosing the pronoun. In the first sentence, "whomever" is the object of the verb "suggests" in the noun clause that ends the sentence. In the second sentence, "whoever" is the subject in the noun clause.

So even though both sentences contain noun clauses that are objects of "recommend," that's not the determining factor.

Now you have the technical explanation. But what was the most popular answer?

Even Garner's Modern English Usage — which helpfully explains that when you're choosing between "whoever" and "whomever," you should choose "whoever" when the pronoun is followed by a verb and "whomever" when the pronoun is not followed by a verb — says that if you're not sure, just go with "whoever." It dominates popular usage and is therefore acceptable.

All right, enough grammar for one day. Let's move on to punctuation for this week's quiz. How would you write the following sentence?

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