I read an article recently on Visual Thesaurus in which the authors, Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner, advocated for never using whose for inanimate objects. As in:
"As the Houston show was being announced, another (Norton) Simon show was at the Princeton University Art Museum, complete with a catalog whose cover featured Van Gogh’s portrait of his mother."
Although the writers acknowledge that using of which for inanimate objects is sometimes awkward, they say, “That’s when you put on your thinking cap and reword the sentence (or even split it into two sentences)” (emphasis in the original).
I often agree with what Glickman and Rubiner say on Visual Thesaurus, but not this time. Their argument for not using whose for inanimate objects is that doing so would “risk that the reader stops reading altogether, responding, however subconsciously, to a fundamental failure of logic.”
Do readers really pause when they see or hear whose representing an object? My guess is that those who are on the lookout for grammar errors, as we editors are (and that includes Glickman and Rubiner), might pick up on it, but the rest of the English-speaking world doesn’t bat an eyelash. Why? Because using whose to represent an inanimate object is not grammatically wrong and has been correct English for over 600 years.
The Oxford English Dictionary lists the third definition of whose as “in reference to a thing or things (inanimate or abstract)” and notes its first use this way was in 1382 in Wycliffe’s Bible. The OED offers examples as recent as 1981 (the text is from the 1989 edition), in case you’re tempted to think things have changed.
The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) and Merriam-Webster Online also allow whose to be used for inanimate objects. Says AHD in its usage note for whose:
"There is extensive literary precedent for the use of whose with inanimate antecedents, as in The play, whose style is rigidly formal, is typical of the period. In an earlier survey this example was acceptable to a large majority of the Usage Panel."
Usage experts agree. Bill Walsh states in The Elephants of Style, “Whitchse isn’t a word, so there’s nothing wrong with using whose to refer to things in addition to people.” H. W. Fowler accepted it in his Modern English Usage in 1926, and Bryan A. Garner lists the use of whose for things as at stage 5 in his Language-Change Index in Garner’s Modern American Usage. Stage 5 is defined as “universally accepted (not counting pseudo-snoot eccentric).”
Is it wrong to use of which instead of whose? Not at all. As Glickman and Rubiner point out, there’s more than one way to say a thing. But copyeditors should use caution before changing whose to of which. If whose sounds out of tune with the rest of the sentence, by all means edit it, whether you pop in of which or recast the sentence. But if whose fits with the rhythm and style of the sentence, we should keep the author’s original wording.
“In the starch that stiffens English style,” says Fowler, “one of the most effective ingredients is the rule that whose shall refer only to persons; to ask a man to write flexible English, but forbid him whose ‘as a relative pronoun of the inanimate’, is like sending a soldier on ‘active’ service & insisting that his tunic collar shall be tight & high; activity & stocks do not agree.”
Header photo via FancyCrave, Unsplash.
This article was originally posted on the Copyediting website, July 6, 2015.
