Question

Correct the underlined part of the sentence, if needed.
It ought to be her with whom you share your secrets, not me.
A) her with whom you share your secrets, not me.
B) her with whom you share your secrets, not I.
C) she with whom you share your secrets, not me.
D) she with whom you share your secrets, not I.
E) her with who you share your secrets, not me.

Answer 1

Hint: This question asks us to correct the given sentence to get the desired meaning. This is known as the transformation of sentences. The transformation or conversion of a sentence means changing its form without altering its sense.

Complete answer:
 In grammar, parallelism, also known as parallel structure or parallel construction, is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same syntactic structure. The use of parallelism affects readability and makes texts easier to understand.

Let us analyze the given options:
Option A) her with whom you share your secrets, not me: This option is correct as in the given statement, ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ clearly refers to the same person in the same case, and so, either both ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ should be subject pronouns or object pronouns. Thus, the given option is valid as here, ‘her’ is the subject pronoun and ‘whom’ is the object pronoun.

Option B) her with whom you share your secrets, not I: This option is incorrect as the structure used lacks parallelism, that is, ‘her’ is followed by ‘I’ which is not the same case as ‘her’ followed by ‘me’ (‘me’ is the same case as ‘her’).

Option C) she with whom you share your secrets, not me:
This option is incorrect as in the given statement, ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ clearly refers to the same person in the same case, and so, either both ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ should be subject pronouns or object pronouns. Thus, the given option is invalid as here, ‘she’ is the subject pronoun and ‘whom’ is the object pronoun.

Option D) she with whom you share your secrets, not I: This option is incorrect as in the given statement, ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ clearly refers to the same person in the same case, and so, either both ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ should be subject pronouns or object pronouns. Thus, the given option is invalid as here, ‘she’ is the subject pronoun and ‘whom’ is the object pronoun.

Option E) her with who you share your secrets, not me: This option is incorrect as in the given statement, ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ clearly refers to the same person in the same case, and so, either both ‘her/she’ and ‘whom/who’ should be subject pronouns or object pronouns. Thus, the given option is invalid as here, ‘who’ is the subject pronoun and ‘her’ is the object pronoun.

Therefore the correct answer is option ‘A’.

Note: The five parallelism rules are:
- Use parallelism with elements joined by coordinating conjunctions.
- Use parallelism with elements in lists or in a series.
- Use parallelism with elements being compared.
- Use parallelism with elements joined by a linking verb or a verb of being.