Whom! Whom! Sometimes it's who!

[MrsBonnie]

Well done if you got the Friends reference in the title

Just proofreading the school's reading policy. I SHOULD know this but... which sentence is correct?

1. For children whom dyslexia is a barrier to their reading progress, we provide extra support...

1. For children who dyslexia is a barrier to their reading progress, we provide extra support...

And while we are at it, would you capitalise 'dyslexia' or 'phonics'? I wouldn't, but the policy does at the moment.

Neither. Children for whom ....

Oops just read the second part of the sentence! Hmmm, 'Children for whom .... will be provided with ...

Neither!
For children where dyslexia...

Or whose

For those children for whom dyslexia is a barrier to their reading progress, we provide

Or

We provide extra support for children whose dyslexia is a barrier ...

Or

We provide extra support for children for whom dyslexia is a barrier ...

Or

We provide extra support for children with barriers - such as dyslexia - to their learning.

Or

We provide extra support for children with barriers to their reading progress, such as dyslexia.

I remember my Head telling me that the average reading age of parents at my school was about 9 (this is the school I attended as a child) & that all school messages had to take that into account. So I guess I'd go for something as clear and uncomplicated as possible.

I wouldn't capitalise but if that's your policy, why antagonise the person who wrote the policy? Having been on MN years, I now realise that people can positively seethe with resentment over small, perceived slights!!

Oh, just seen spanieleyes' recommendation of 'where'. That's great.

'Where dyslexia is a barrier to learning ...'

That's very clear.

Definitely don't capitalise! Random capitalisation of nouns really bothers me, especially in school documents. You wouldn't say it's okay to miss capital letters that should be there, so don't add them in where they shouldn't be.

Capitalisation depends on the context. If you are talking about phonics in general then it's lowercase (eg. We use phonics to help us read.) But if you're talking about it as a subject then it's uppercase (eg. Tommy was late for Phonics).

Who/whom - easy way to remember it is that a question that would be answered with 'hiM' needs 'whoM' as a question. 'He' needs 'who'. For example:

Who does it belong to? It belongs to him.
Who took it? He took it.

Oops, unhelpful typo! :D

I meant "Whom does it belong to?"

Thank you, everyone!