I have read Grammar Girl's excellent post on the difference between "between" and "among", but I've run into a scenario that has confused me. I used the sentence "Compare heights between these people." for a specific set of people, but someone told me I should have used "among". His explanation was that "these people" is a generic list and thus "among" is the proper choice.
I thought that the one-to-one relationship between a height and a person was central, as we are comparing people with one another based on this attribute. Are we then treating the group as distinct members, and would this make "between" correct?
Best Answer
Between is only used when you are dealing with two-ness and know that you are dealing with two-ness. If you compare two things (be they groups, individuals, whatever) and there is no room for confusion, you use between.
Otherwise, you use among.
Example: This morning, I got up, dressed, put on a pair of shoes. As I have only the two pairs of shoes, I decided between my options because I know as a fact that I have only the two pairs (and don't do anything strange like put on the left-brown and the right-black and call it a third pair).
Then I run into a friend who has many pairs of shoes. He simply cannot conceive of anyone owning only two pairs of shoes. He doesn't know I only have two pairs, so he asks if those were the best choice I could make from among my options.
We are both correct in our usages.