"To whom"

 As far as I'm concerned, "the person to whom it happened" isn't
standard written English, it's the tortured English of old fashioned
style grammar teachers. Perhaps it used to be correct, but not anymore,
and everyone I know, including my old English teacher, would write "the
person (who/that) it happened to" so it hardly counts as colloquial.
Anyone who uses "whom" at all here either: a) is the Queen/other member
of the royal family, b) is trying to sound like royalty, or c) has been
taught the fictional English of prescriptivist teachers.
 Anyway, my point is that using "to whom" rather than postponing the
preposition until after the verb is not standard written English, even
if it used to be, because that usage is pretty much dead in the written
as well as the spoken language, so it's hardly standard. Similarly,
everyone I know postpones the preposition in writing as well, so here at
least it's not just a colloquial spoken form, but is in fact the
standard way of forming oblique relatives in both the spoken and written
language.
 *deep breath* Sorry for the rant, I just objected to you calling that
word order "colloquial" and implying that the other is "standard". ;)

>So if you do use that word order, you're already speaking colloquial
>English, not standard written English, so the grammar rules are
>different.
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