Until my college days, I used to be supremely confident of choosing correctly between the prepositions “between” and “among.” This was because my grade-school grammar teachers had so efficiently drilled into my brain this very simple rule: “Use ‘between’ for two, and use ‘among’ for more than two.” The rule worked very well indeed for sentence constructions involving twosomes, like “The bond between Eduardo and Alberto is very strong,” and for those involving threesomes or more, like “Choosing from among three or five job applicants is easy.” I’d hardly bat an eyelash when making the choice.

But there finally came a time when I began to have my doubts. Using “between” rarely gave me problems, but there were far too many situations when using “among” for threesomes or more simply didn’t seem right. Sentences like the following particularly baffled me: “The chiffon cake was divided among Ana, Gloria, and Julia.” “The stewardess had mud among her fingers.” “The rich matron must have dropped her wallet somewhere among the supermarket, the street, and the parking lot.” In all three cases, “among” seemed to me a grammatical misfit and the preposition “between” a more natural choice.

As things turned out, my gut feel was right. Years later, when I finally put my mind to resolving my doubts, I discovered that contrary to what many of us had been taught, the idiomatically correct way to say those sentences is as follows: “The chiffon cake was divided between Ana, Gloria, and Julia.” “The stewardess had mud between her fingers.” “The rich matron must have dropped her handbag somewhere between the supermarket, the street, and the parking lot.” I also found several other wrinkles to the “between”/“among” rule that I hardly knew about.

It’s well settled among English-language authorities, of course, that “between” is the only choice when exactly two entities are specified: “This is a private matter between you and me.” “The hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah have escalated into open warfare.” However, we enter a gray area when more than two entities are involved or when the number of entities is unspecified. In such cases, the choice between “between” and “among” will actually depend on what we intend to say.

Here’s what The American Heritage Book of English Usage prescribes for those situations:

(1) Use “between” when the entities are considered as distinct individuals: “The Black Hawk landed between the tenement houses.” The helicopter is assumed not to have landed on any of the individual houses but anywhere between them.

(2) Use “among” when the entities are considered as a mass or collectivity: “The Black Hawk landed among the tenement houses.” The helicopter is assumed to have landed in the general location of the houses, and the possibility is left open that it could have landed on one of those houses.

“Between” is therefore used when the entities are seen as determining the limits or endpoints of a range, “among” when indicating inclusion in a group.

The Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary emphasizes that “between” is particularly appropriate for denoting a one-to-one relationship, regardless of the number of items involved. It says that “between” is called for in the following situations:

(1) When the number is unspecified: “There should be close coordination between line departments.”

(2) When more than two are enumerated: “This is between you and me and the walls of this room.”

(3) Even when only one item is mentioned but repetition is implied: “The motorist stopped between every intersection to make a cellular phone call.”

Both American Heritage and Merriam-Webster’s 11th consider “among” more appropriate when the emphasis is on distribution or inclusion in a group rather than on individual relationships: “The restiveness among the youth has lately become a serious problem in France.” “Dylan Thomas is among the most celebrated of modern poets in English.”

I trust that this discussion has sufficiently clarified the proper usage of “between” and “among.” (July 7, 2006)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, July 7, 2006 issue © 2010 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

MORE READINGS ON “BETWEEN,” “AMONG” USAGE:
A recurrent misuse of “between”
My hunch was right about the usage of “between” and “among”

MY ANALYSIS OF THE ITEMS IN THE “AMONG”/“BETWEEN” TEST:

1. “Division of property among heirs not to exceed 20 years”

The use of “among” in the above headline is grammatically iffy. That headline should read as “Division of property between heirs not to exceed 20 years,” in the same way that “between” was used in the sentence  “The chiffon cake was divided between Ana, Gloria, and Julia” in my essay above.

2. “Connivance continues between smugglers, Customs personnel”

The headline above should use “among” instead of “between,” and should thus read as follows: “Connivance continues among smugglers, Customs personnel.” The rule that applies here is this: Use “among” when the entities are considered as a mass or collectivity, as in the sentence “The Black Hawk landed among the tenement houses” cited in my essay above.

3. “Highway Between Bataan, Pampanga Widened”

The use of “between” by the headline above is grammatically wrong. Since “between” here is being used in the sense of the “space or interval that separates” Bataan and Pampanga, that headline gives the wrong impression that the highway is outside both of the two provinces; in short, it’s in nowhere land. Obviously, “among” won’t work in that headline either. The correct preposition is “through” in the sense of “passage from one end or boundary to another,” so that headline should read as follows: “Highway Through Bataan, Pampanga Widened.”

4. “The recent friendly football match between the Philippine team, the Azkals, and Malaysia's champion football team on Feb. 29 was supposed to bring camaraderie between the two nations and instill a sense of healthy competition and pride in Filipinos.” - Sexual harassment complaint filed vs. Azkals members

The lead sentence above used “between” correctly in both cases but suffers from a confusing grammatical glitch the first time around. This is because the serial construction “the Philippine team, the Azkals, and Malaysia's champion football team” gives the wrong impression that three teams—not two—competed in the football match, namely “the Philippine team,” “the Azkals,” and “Malaysia’s champion football team.” Of course, “the Philippine team” and “the Azkals” are in reality one and the same team.

Here’s a quick fix for that grammatical glitch: “The recent friendly football match between the Azkals of the Philippines and Malaysia's champion football team on Feb. 29 was supposed to bring camaraderie between the two nations and instill a sense of healthy competition and pride in Filipinos.”

5. “President Aquino urged Chief Justice Renato Corona yesterday to explain the apparent discrepancies between his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) and his declared properties.” - Noy urges Corona to explain discrepancies between SALN, properties

The use of “between” is correct in the headline above but due to the serial enumeration that follows it (“his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN)”), it becomes very fuzzy indeed as to where the alleged discrepancies are to be found—whether among the items in the SALN itself or among the declared properties.

The confusion could have been cleared up had the paper’s editors positioned the phrase “his declared properties” ahead of the items in the SALN, as follows:

“President Aquino urged Chief Justice Renato Corona yesterday to explain the apparent discrepancies between his declared properties and his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).”

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Some time ago, three Forum members asked me one grammar question apiece that they had found perplexing. Many of you must have puzzled over similar questions yourself sometime, so I thought of sharing with you my answers to them.

Here’s my reply to lv:

I’m afraid you didn’t get it right, lv. From the grammatical standpoint, the correct antecedent of the subordinate clause “that expresses a complete thought” is the singular noun phrase “group of words”; this is the reason why “expresses,” the operative verb in that subordinate clause, is in the singular form. Also, from a notional standpoint, what “expresses a complete thought” isn’t just “a word” or just “any group of words,” but “a sentence” specifically, so the subject being modified by the subordinate clause “that expresses a complete thought” could only be the group of words that’s known as “a sentence.” Both grammatically and notionally, therefore, the operative verb in that sentence should be the singular form “expresses.”

Determining the correct antecedent noun in sentence constructions of this kind is admittedly tricky. It’s very tempting to assume that the noun nearest to the operative verb is the antecedent noun, but this isn’t the only criterion in establishing subject-verb agreement; we need to verify if that assumption is borne out by the semantics and logic of the sentence. In this particular case, it is semantically and logically clear that the antecedent noun—the subject that’s being modified by the subordinate clause—could only be the singular noun “sentence.”

This second question is from Forum member royljc: 

Here’s my reply to royljc:

In the sentences you presented, the verb phrase “be it” is actually the subjunctive form of “whether it is,” and the verb phrase “be that” the subjunctive form of “whether that is.” (Here, the subjunctive mood expresses contingent outcomes as opposed to expressing certainties, which is what the indicative mood does.) The difference between “be it” and “be that” is simply that in the former, the speaker is referring to things or objects generally, while in the latter, the speaker is pointing to specific things or objects in a more familiar way (using “that” as a pointing adjective).

And here, from Forum member KMXer, is the third question: 

My reply to KMXer:

The correct female possessive pronoun in such sentence constructions is “hers,” which means “that which belongs to her,” so the grammatically correct sentence is “I am a fan of hers.” “Her” when used without a following noun is equivalent in meaning to the adjective “her.” The form “her’s” is not a valid possessive pronoun form in English. Forming the possessive by affixing apostrophe-s is done only on nouns, as in “Alfred’s,” “man’s fate,” and “the cat’s paw.” (November 26, 2010)
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, November 26, 2010 issue © 2010 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

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