How Many in your Group?

When you have something in the midst of a group, if the group is two, you use “between.” If the group is more than two, say five, you use “among.” Sixth grade grammar. Here’s a selection from an article in The New York Times, getting it wrong. (Emphasis mine.) I’m surprised they let it slip through.

Though competition between the five remains fierce — and each year, a few of them seem up and a few down — it’s becoming harder to picture how any one of them, let alone two or three, may cede their growing clout in every aspect of American business and society.

The article is about the biggest US companies in the tech field, and it’s fairly interesting. I wonder what the writer would have written had he broadened his scope a bit—He left out some pretty big companies, such as Saudi Aramco, Bank of China, and Tata Group.