| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 47. between |
| between and among. Between is used for two, and among for more than two.” This decree of grammar may still echo in your old classroom, but you would be wise to consider other reverberations as well. It is true that between is the only choice when exactly two entities are specified. For example, you must say the choice between (not among) good and evil and the rivalry between (not among) Great Britain and France. But when more than two entities are involved or when the number of entities is unspecified, the word choice depends on what you want to say. You use between when the entities are considered as distinct individuals and among when they are considered as a mass or collectivity. Thus in the sentence The balloon landed between the houses, the houses are seen as points that define the boundaries of the area where the balloon touched down. We assume, therefore, that the balloon did not land on any of the individual houses. In The balloon landed among the houses, the area of landing is considered to be the general location of the houses, taken together. It leaves open the possibility that the balloon came down on one of the houses. By the same token, we may speak of a series of wars between the Greek cities, which suggests that each city was an independent participant in the hostilities, or of a series of wars among the Greek cities, which allows for the possibility that the participants were shifting alliances of cities. For this reason, among is used to indicate inclusion in a group: She is among the best of our young sculptors. There is a spy among you. Use between when the entities are seen as determining the limits or endpoints of a range: They searched the area between the river, the farmhouse, and the woods. The truck driver had obviously been drinking between stops. | 1 |
| between you and I. This oft-maligned phrase is discussed as one of the case problems at
pronouns, personal under Grammar. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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