Learn English – Phrasing a sentence “Do you know any people whom I could combine the efforts with?”

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I'm composing a sentence and I have doubts on whether it's correctly formed.
First I wrote

  1. "Do you know any people whom I could combine my efforts with?"

than I thought nah, that's not right, and wrote

  1. "Do you know any people that I could combine my efforts with?"

but that "that" also didn't feel right so I went with

  1. "Do you know any people I could combine my efforts with?"

What would be the proper way to phrase it? Thank you.

Best Answer

The first is nearly correct, but it is conventional to put the preposition with before whom:

Do you know any people with whom I could combine my efforts?

Here is a question from EL&U that justifies the use of whom, and incidentally shows where to put the preposition.

Your second option is correct but somewhat unsatisfactory: it is just a way of avoiding the issue of whom.

The third is also correct and equally unsatisfactory: it is the same as the second apart from exercising the option to drop the relative pronoun that. This is just a personal opinion, but I think that it's OK to exercise this option in spoken English but it's a bit slack for formal, written English.

Note that there is no option to drop the reltive pronoun who or whom.

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