{"id":2368,"date":"2017-01-11T11:48:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T17:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2368"},"modified":"2020-11-25T11:21:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T17:21:01","slug":"among-vs-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/prepositions\/among-vs-between\/","title":{"rendered":"Among<\/em> vs. Between<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of you sent in comments on last week\u2019s Year-End Quiz. The question receiving the most comments was:<\/p>\n

7. James is trying to decide between three college majors; accounting, finance, or economics.<\/p>\n

Our point with this question was to demonstrate that the semicolon should instead be a colon. We didn\u2019t anticipate the many comments exemplified by this one from Kathi M.:<\/p>\n

[S]hould it not be “among” instead of “between” because there are more than two choices?<\/p>\n

Those of you who have copies of both the tenth and eleventh editions of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation<\/em> will notice this among<\/em> vs. between<\/em> entry that was included in the \u201cConfusing Words and Homonyms\u201d section of the tenth edition:<\/p>\n

among<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 involves three or more
\n\u00a0 Example: Who among us has not lied?<\/em><\/p>\n

between<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0involves just two
\n\u00a0 Example: She couldn\u2019t decide between Chinese and Thai food.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, we dropped this entry from the eleventh edition (and from the Confusing Words and Homonyms<\/a> section online) after determining that the distinction is more nuanced than simply how many options are involved.<\/p>\n

The notion that between<\/em> applies to two things and among<\/em> to more than two is often, but not always, correct. Perhaps the misunderstanding derives from the fact that while among<\/em> always applies to three or more things, it is only when those items are part of a larger group or are not individually named. Between<\/em> is used for two items as well as for more than two when they are specific, individual items.<\/p>\n

Examples:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I must decide between<\/strong> going to work sick or working from home. <\/em>
\n(between<\/strong> applies to two things)<\/p>\n

Corina is able to choose between<\/strong> Stanford, Harvard, McGill, and Oxford for her future school. <\/em>
\n(between<\/strong> applies to more than two individually named items)<\/p>\n

Corina is able to choose from among<\/strong> the best universities in the world for her future school.<\/em>
\n(among<\/strong> applies to more than two items that are part of a group or are not specifically named)<\/p>\n

There are many more examples we could list, but you probably get the idea.<\/p>\n

To further complicate our former simplistic notion about between<\/em> vs. among<\/em>, the Associated Press Stylebook <\/em>had this to say:<\/p>\n

The maxim that between<\/em> introduces two items and among<\/em> introduces more than two covers most questions about how to use these words \u2026<\/p>\n

However, between<\/em> is the correct word when expressing the relationships of three or more items considered one pair at a time: Negotiations on a debate format are underway between the network and the Ford, Carter, and McCarthy committees.<\/em><\/p>\n

We hope you can see now that the error in question No. 7 was just the semicolon, and that you can understand why we chose to omit among<\/strong>, between<\/strong> from the eleventh edition of The Blue Book<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of you sent in comments on last week\u2019s Year-End Quiz. The question receiving the most comments was: 7. James is trying to decide between three college majors; accounting, finance, or economics. Our point with this question was to demonstrate that the semicolon should instead be a colon. We didn\u2019t anticipate the many comments exemplified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prepositions"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}