Who was this letter written by?

[Ooshoha1995]

Who wrote this letter?
Passive:
1. Who was this letter written by?
2. By whom was this letter written?

Which is correct? I heard the second structure many times but our teacher said it was incorrect.

[Esl_Expert]

Hi Ooshoha1995,

Sentence 2 is formally correct, but sentence 1 is the version that is actually used in everyday English. Sentence 1 is very natural and would be the usual way to word that question.

Sentence 2 is so very formal, that it will end up sounding stilted and unnecessarily formal in many, or even most contexts. So, even though sentence 2 is technically correct, that is not what is used in the vast majority of situations.

What a native speaker would NOT say, however, is this:

- By who was this letter written?

In other words, when 'By' is used at the beginning of the question (i.e. directly before the pronoun), it will always trigger the use of the object pronoun ('whom').

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"People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events." ~ T. S. Eliot

[Ooshoha1995]

thanks, Esl_Expert. The sentence 1 is used in most cases than the second one.