Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[nawee]

Hello,

At school I was taught that "between" is used with 2 things and "among" is used with more than 2 things (3 up). Does that rule still stand? Is the choice between "between" and "among" determined by the meaning of the sentence?

"A characteristic of American higher education is that credit for work is transferrable among universities."

In that sentence, can we use "between" instead of "among"? Can we interpret that in each transfer, there are 2 universities involved: the one the student transfer from and the one the student transfer to?

Thank you,

Nawee

[Yinglish]

[lotus]

Hi Nawee,

Sometimes rules are made to simplify things. But, reality is not always simple.

Search for "transferable courses" in these three sites and you will see that there are more than two transferable institutions mentioned in each.
http://www.cile.edu/voyage.htm
http://www.iupui.edu/news/ivytechagreement.htm
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:s7F3NdunA5QJ:www.cansystem.org/

These are written by highly educated educators. Their use of "between" is with the idea of sharing (5) instead of separating (1) or comparing [8].
http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/between

"A characteristic of the American higher education system is that credit for work done is transferable between universities."


--lotus
_________________
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