Resources
Between/Among
Among You, Me, and the Lamppost?
By Evan Jenkins
A reader was kind enough to write to applaud our sermon on "unique" ("The One and Only," CJR, March/April 1997), but he also had a complaint. On the same page of the magazine, he noted, an article said, "And their success will depend largely on cooperation — between the media and the court and, especially, BETWEEN members of the press" (reader's emphasis added). "Since 'members' is plural," the note asked, "should it not read 'among members of the press' "? Probably not. The rule that calls for "among" when more than two things are being discussed is a rule of thumb, and a rough one at that. In any group, the members may relate to each other in a block or, as seems more likely in the reader's example, individually ̬ A to B, A to C, B to A, and so on. So "between members of the press" makes more sense.
"Between" was also wanted in this passage from a newspaper report: "The F.B.I.'s refusal of the White House's request was a vivid example of the tensions among the White House, the Justice Department and the F.B.I." As the article made clear, the tensions arose between the White House and the Justice Department, between the Justice Department and the F.B.I., and between the White House and the F.B.I.
And for this one, you didn't need the context to know that the writer (or, at least as likely, the editor) was following a rule of thumb out the window: "...an airline charter service that operates among Havana, the Bahamas and Mexico." Those planes obviously fly between Havana and the Bahamas, to mention only one leg of their travels. (CJR, Sept./Oct. 1997)
Addendum, May 13 1998:
This time, the rule of thumb applied. The announcer said of the
officials at a basketball game that they had "49 years' experience
between the three." The experience was the group's, and the
word had to be "among."
CJR
