Between vs. Among—What’s the Difference?

• Use between when referring to one-to-one relationships.
• Use among when referring to indistinct or nonspecific relationships.

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We already touched on the difference between between and among when we talked about the difference between among and amongst. But let’s take a closer look at these two commonly confused words. We might even dispel a grammar myth in the process.

When to Use Between

There’s a common and oddly persistent belief that between should be used only when there are two elements, and among should be used when there are more than two elements. But this rule is a myth—or, to be more charitable, it’s a great oversimplification. You can use between when there are more than two elements involved:

He had to choose between a bicycle, a train set, a pair of sneakers, and a new backpack for his birthday present.

In fact, you can use between for any number of elements, as long as all the elements are separate and distinct. According to The Chicago Manual of Style, you can even use between when “multiple one-to-one relationships are understood from the context”:

Negotiations between the member states collapsed last night.

When describing spatial relationships, between usually means in the middle of something, or in the space restricted by something:

He drove too quickly between the cars.

When to Use Among

Among is used when talking about people or things that are not distinct and are viewed as a group:

There wasn’t much unity among the council members.

Among could indicate that something belongs to a group:

She only ever felt comfortable when she was among her friends.

When referring to spatial relationships, among tells us that something is surrounded by something else:

Paula always wanted to go swimming among dolphins.

Examples

Palumbo Group is planning on creating an offshore hub between Malta and Tenerife and strengthening collaboration between the two islands following talks it had with Tenerife’s port authority president this week.

Times of Malta

In my last article I wrote about the difference between AI and Machine Learning (ML).

Forbes

The 59th Annual Grammy nominees were announced Tuesday morning, and while familiar names appeared among the five Latin music categories, there were also some nice surprises.

NPR

Among the big-ticket items, one that is set to put a spell on buyers is that of Walt Disney’s last will and testament.

CNBC

How to Spell 40: Forty or Fourty?

40 (forty) is the number that follows 39 and precedes 41. Though it’s related to the number “four” (4), the modern spelling of 40 is “forty.” The older form, “fourty,” is treated as a misspelling today. The modern spelling could reflect a historical pronunciation change.

If you catch yourself misspelling the name of this number as fourty, you’re not alone. It’s a common mistake, both in print and online:

Female grey whales are fighting for their life. Fourty-three female whales are breeding in the group in 2015, a big increase from the 27 female whales in 2004.

—Nature World News

Fourty years ago when the mayor of Elkhorn was Bill Bartley, he and his council members saw the need for a village seniors complex and residence that would keep area seniors in the community as active members.

—Empire Advance

Nevertheless, the correct spelling, forty, prevails.

Forty state legislators oppose a plan to legalize casinos in three Arkansas counties, a group hoping to block votes on the measure announced Monday.

—Hot Springs Sentinel Record

The staff got the surprise of their lives when the note in question came out without ‘forty’ being censored to ‘fourty’. . . This time the collector stood up and said, “I’m sorry, Mr Pati. I checked the spelling of ‘forty’ in the dictionary. You are correct.”

—New Indian Express

The second quote from the New Indian Express helps demonstrate how to get to the bottom of the issue. Check a dictionary! You will find that the correct spelling is definitely forty. Dictionaries usually provide any accepted alternative spellings of words, but there is no acceptable variant spelling of forty.

Why are there so many instances of fourty on the Internet? Well, it’s kind of a tricky spelling, especially in compound numbers such as forty-four. Forty actually deviates from a pattern if you think about it. There’s four, fourteen, and then forty. Afterward there’s four hundred, four thousand, and so on.

What about related terms? Fortieth relates to forty, so there’s no U. On the other hand, fourth refers to four, so it is spelled with a U. In fact, that’s a good memory aid to help you differentiate the two.

Here’s a tip: The U is associated with four and related words, but forty and its derivatives don’t have a U.

Why Is Forty So Different?

Forty is unique, but how did it get that way? The Online Etymology Dictionary traces forty to Old English from a Northumbrian word that compounded terms meaning “four” and “group of ten.” As early as 1821, its modern spelling appeared in expressions such as forty winks and forty-niners. Just in case you’re wondering, forty winks refers to a short nap and a forty-niner is a person who migrated to California in 1849 to prospect gold. A San Francisco football team, the 49ers, currently bears the name (although they tend to use numerals and thereby avoid the forty/fourty problem altogether). You can easily find references to these iconic “forty” terms in literature. Here’s one:

If she’ll just stay around the house for a few days and take forty winks of sleep she’ll be as fit as ever.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gretchen’s Forty Winks

Don’t be too hard on yourself or others who add that extraneous U to forty. It’s really not intuitive, and there are so many instances of fourty online that you might think it’s right. Avoid being fooled by remembering that forty does not have a U.

How to Customize Your Writing in Job Applications

Writing job applications is a necessary evil that awaits most of us. On the plus side, applications allow us to reach for the stars—or at least for employers we would never be able to reach through recommendations or word of mouth. On the flip side, they offer the same opportunity to hundreds of other people who are also looking for a job. To make matters even worse, in this day and age you can’t use the same résumé and cover letter for every job post you see. You will see a lot of them, and you’ll send out plenty of applications, before landing a job. Employers expect personalized job applications. For you, that means either you’ll have to start each application from scratch, or you’ll need to create a template and learn how to customize it. You could also download templates, or even whole cover letters and résumés from the Internet, but that wouldn’t be smart, given how anti-plagiarism tools (like Grammarly’s) are good at noticing those kinds of things. No, customization is your best bet. If we agree that a standard job application consists of a résumé and a cover letter, let’s suppose you’ve done your research and written templates for them. Now, what?

Start With the Résumé

For the résumé, the whole idea behind the following set of tips is that you shouldn’t spend hours rewriting a résumé for each job application you send out. It’s better to focus on tailoring a few points that are proven to be important for getting your résumé into the right hands. Or any hands, as you’ll see in a moment.

Customize Your Objective

After your name and contact information, the next thing you need to include on your résumé is the objective, or the target job title. You should make sure it exactly matches the position you’re applying for. For instance, if you’re applying for a position as an assistant manager in retail, you shouldn’t write “assistant manager” as your objective—you should add the “retail” part and make it match the title of the position you’re applying for.

Do Not Forget the Summary

This is the part of the résumé that comes after the objective, and you use it to highlight your most important skills and achievements. In the summary, you should bring out only the things that have something to do with the job requirements. Those are your strongest selling points. There’s a method to this madness—recruiters don’t spend a lot of time reading most résumés. So you should give them everything they need to know about you—everything that makes you a good candidate for the job—right from the start.

Mind the Keywords

For all this work to mean anything, your résumé needs to get to a recruiter, and for that, it needs to have specific keywords. Why? Because applications are scanned by software for the most important words from the job post, and applications that don’t contain them rarely if ever get read by human beings. So you should check the original job post for specific keywords, and then make sure you include the same keywords, when appropriate, in your résumé. If the job post states that you need to be proficient in a specific program, let’s say Adobe Dreamweaver, and your résumé says you’re familiar with the whole roster of Adobe’s products, write down each individual product, Dreamweaver included. With that, you have finished customizing your résumé.

Do Wonders with Your Cover Letter

Your cover letter is the part of the job application in which you should expand on the information you gave in the résumé and do your very best to sell yourself as the perfect person for the job.

Start with the First Paragraph

The first paragraph is where you introduce yourself as a candidate for the job. You could make it about yourself, and about the job you’re applying for. Mentioning how you found out about the job is also something you should do because that’s one of the things that signals to the reader that they don’t have a generic cover letter in their hands.

Customize the Middle

Because you already customized the résumé to make it a better fit for the keywords and the job post in general, your cover letter should follow suit. Include the most important skills, traits, and experiences—probably the same ones you included in your résumé’s summary. If you can, show how your other skills support your claim of being the best candidate for the job.

Let Them Know You Listened (or Read)

Include the important terms from the job post in your cover letter. Sure, you should write about how your skills make you a great candidate and how they synergize to make you a being of pure awesomeness, but if that’s all you do, your cover letter will look far from personalized. It needs to reflect the things your prospective employer mentions in the job post because that’s how you show you’ve actually read the job post and took the time to write a cover letter specifically for this job. Just look at the job requirements as a series of problems and your skills as a series of solutions, and customize your cover letter so that it includes both. Don’t just say that you have five years of experience. Explain how their requirement of having at least three years of experience won’t be a problem for you because you have five. Make yourself an answer to their needs.

Words of Wisdom from Great Women Writers

In honor of International Women’s Day, we rounded up nine of our favorite quotes from women writers about reading. Share your favorite quotes about reading and writing in the comments section!

5 Best Writers’ Retreats of All Time

Some like it hot. Others like it cold, or cluttered, or colorful. As you can imagine, authors, poets, and playwrights find inspiration in a variety of writing environments. With Log Cabin Day coming up on June 28, the Grammarly team began thinking about the best — and most interesting — places to write.

Are you curious about where your favorite author penned his or her bestseller?

Henry David Thoreau: Walden Pond

Seeking an escape from modern life, Henry David Thoreau found the perfect spot adjacent to picturesque Walden Pond. There, he built a minimal shack for under $30 and kept it simple with just chairs, a desk, a bed, and a table. Happily, this shack served as more than a refuge — it became an inspiration to Thoreau. He lived here for two years while he pondered and wrote his best-known book, Walden. An experiment in self-sufficiency, simple living, and independence, Thoreau’s Walden continues to inspire readers today.

George Bernard Shaw: “London”

George Bernard Shaw built a unique writing structure on his own property, hidden in the garden. He gave it the code name “London” so that when callers inquired after his whereabouts they could be honestly informed that the playwright had gone to London. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the hut is its ability to rotate to catch the best possible sunlight. Since Shaw preferred to write under constant sunlight, London was the ideal location.

Virginia Woolf: Garden Shed

Anyone who has read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own knows exactly how the author felt about having a private retreat to put her words to paper. In the garden of the house she shared with her husband, Woolf had a small shed of her own where she wrote some of her best-known novels. While she didn’t pen A Room of One’s Own here, it is where she wrote Mrs. Dalloway and The Waves, among others. Even better, her home was a magnet for other writers in the Bloomsbury Group, including T.S. Eliot and E.M. Forster.

Roald Dahl: Gypsy Hut

Like Woolf, Roald Dahl also worked from a garden shed to write some of his best novels. His was custom built and known as the “gypsy hut.” He worked hard to keep the space to himself, going so far as to ban his own children from entering. Those who caught a peek inside reported that the hut looked more like a laboratory than a library, which is perhaps fitting for such an inventive writer. Dahl worked religiously in the hut, penning much-loved novels like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach.

Dylan Thomas: Boathouse

While some writers keep their spaces impeccably tidy, Dylan Thomas plastered his writing area with words, lists, rhymes, and pieces by fellow writers like Walt Whitman and W.H. Auden. Before Thomas used this area as a writing space, it had spent a previous life as a cliffside boathouse. Thomas saw this space as his workshop and treated it as such, pinning inspiration, photographs, and works in progress to the walls. Today, there’s no doubt this was an inspiring space — the writer penned his famous Under Milk Wood here before departing Wales for New York, never to return.

In lieu of a private office or library, the writers above decided to try something different to help inspire their work. From custom-built huts to garden shacks to repurposed boathouses, each author took the initiative to create a unique space meant to stop writer’s block in its tracks. As a result, these writer’s retreats inspired some of the most-loved works of literature.

Where (or what) is your ideal writer’s retreat?

This Is How to Effectively Plan for Second Interview Questions

You’ve been invited to a second interview—well done! But don’t get too comfortable just yet. If you’ve been asked to interview a second time, you’re likely up against the company’s top few candidates. That means the stakes are higher than ever, and you need to prepare to give the interview all you’ve got.

Why Second Interviews Are So Important

Think of the first interview as the getting-to-know-you phase. The interviewer assessed whether your skillset checked off all the right boxes and you seemed like a good cultural fit. In the second interview, the hiring manager who chose you gets to show you off. “Look! Here’s one of my top picks for this position.” You’ve got to make him look good by proving him right.

It’s also essential to realize that you’re almost certainly not the only person interviewing a second time. You’re going to be up against another candidate or two with qualifications that closely match your own. You may even be a little bit behind the curve for one reason or another. Perhaps you’re an amazing cultural fit, but you fall a bit short on experience compared to another candidate.

For these reasons, it’s essential to pull out all the stops in preparing for your second interview. You need to go in ready to make an impression that will earn you a job offer.

In the second interview, the hiring manager who chose you gets to show you off. “Look! Here’s one of my top picks for this position.” You’ve got to make him look good by proving him right.

What Happens in a Second Interview

Chances are, your second interview will be with the person who interviewed you, plus another stakeholder or two, such as a manager or department head. Although you’ll be introduced to new people, and you may be asked some of the same things you were asked during the first interview, you should be prepared for some more in-depth questions.

Second interviews typically include more detailed questions about your qualifications and your ability to handle the job. Prepare to be asked how you’d handle various on-the-job situations. Where first interview questions are often more general, expect second interview questions to become more specific and targeted toward the job you’re applying for.

Examples of Common Second Interview Questions and Answers

What challenges are you looking for in a position?

This is a good time to talk about skills you’d like to advance. If you’ve recently received education or a certification, you might discuss how eager you are to apply what you’ve learned.

Why are you interested in working for this company?

Hopefully, by now you understand the requirements of the job very well. Use this question to reiterate how having skills that match those requirements makes you excited to take on a new challenge.

What do you know about this company and what we do?

Research! Take notes as you’re exploring the company website, social media profiles, and the LinkedIn accounts of key players and people you’ll likely be talking to. Being able to talk about what you’ve learned shows enthusiasm and passion.

Why are you the best person for the job?

Again, this is a great opportunity to reiterate your skills and accomplishments and how well they match the requirements for the position. If you’ve already addressed these things, talk about soft skills like your work ethic, adaptability, or willingness to take on new challenges.

Why do you want to work here?

This question will make your research pay off yet again. Talk about how your goals align with the company’s objectives.

What are your salary requirements?

It’s important to know what you should be earning, so advance research will help you negotiate. Begin by saying that you’re open, based on the requirements of the position and the overall compensation package. Wait to see what’s offered and negotiate from there. If you’re forced to give a number, be prepared to show research that supports your salary request.

Preparing for a Second Interview

In some respects, second interviews are easier—you already have a good idea about the things you said in your first interview that sold the hiring manager. Now, your job is to expand on them and show the company why hiring you would be a sound business decision.

Build on your first interview.

Pay attention to the hiring manager during your first interview. She’s likely to give subtle (or not-so-subtle) tells when something piques her interest. She may nod her head, lean forward, smile, ask clarifying questions, or show other signs of enthusiasm.

What responses did the interviewer react positively to? These are some of the same things you should drive home in your second interview.

Do your homework . . . again.

You probably researched the company for your first interview. That knowledge helped you become a leading candidate. Now it’s time to dig in again and find out all you can about the company, the requirements of the position, and the people you’ll be talking to.

Scour the company website and social media accounts. Do a Google search to see if they’ve been featured recently in the press. You’ve probably already noticed major themes, like whether the company values innovation or has a more traditional structure. Now is a good time to home in on details. Knowing more about the company will enable you to relate your skills to the company’s needs.

Expect the unexpected.

When you’re offered the second interview, it’s perfectly acceptable to ask what you should expect and who you’ll be talking to. Knowing the names and titles of the people you’ll be interviewing with, as well as other details about the process, will help you prepare.

If your job is such that you can build a portfolio of samples, prepare one and bring it. Even if you showed them at your first meeting, the new person or people that you meet with will also benefit from seeing them.

You’ll likely meet several people, so consider scripting a brief elevator pitch to introduce yourself, your skills, and your experience. Rehearse your spiel so you can recite it easily when the time comes.

The stakes may well be high with a second interview—although you’ve garnered attention, that job offer’s not in the bag yet. But taking the time to prepare will enable you to walk in with a level of professionalism and confidence that’s sure to impress.

What’s the Difference Between Was and Were?

The key to understanding when to use was or were in a sentence is determining whether you need to use the subjunctive mood or not. A verb is in the subjunctive mood if it expresses an action or state that is not reality. For example, it might be hypothetical, wished for, or conditional.

“Was” and “Were” as Past and Subjunctive Verb Tenses

To better see what we are up against when deciding when to use was or were, let’s compare the past and subjunctive conjugations of to be side by side.

Past tense of “to be”	I was	you were	he was	she was	it was	we were	you were	they were
Subjunctive of “to be”	I were	you were	he were	she were	it were	we were	you were	they were

Our chart reveals something delightful. You can’t go wrong choosing were with the second person (you), the first person plural (we), the second person plural (you), or the third person plural (they). We only need to make a choice about when to use was or were with the first person singular (I) and the third person singular (he, she, or it). Isn’t that great news?

Is It “If I Was” or “If I Were”?

Use were if the state of being you are describing is in no way the current reality. This is true whenever a hypothetical situation is expressed, for example.

If Harry were to find all the Horcruxes in time, we would not be forced to submit to Voldemort’s evil will.

Would you invite me over if I were more polite at the dinner table?

The first sentence can be described as an unreal conditional clause. These hypotheticals are easy to spot because they are often introduced by an if and are related to another clause containing a would or could.

Another type of unreal conditional sentence that uses the same construction demanding the subjunctive were is the impossible or improbable type.

If it were possible to solve the puzzle, I would have done it.

Here the speaker implies that the puzzle is unsolvable. Therefore, solving the puzzle is not a likely reality, and the subjunctive were is used instead of the past tense was.

That does not mean that every clause beginning with if I requires the use of if I was rather than if I were.

If I was wrong about Felicity’s love of puppies, I can take this one back to the shelter.

In this sentence, the speaker acknowledges that it is possible he or she may have incorrectly thought that Felicity loves puppies and has given her a puppy in error. The fact that it is possible the speaker is describing reality makes this an indicative sentence, not a subjunctive one. Therefore, we use was instead of were.

Use “Were,” Not “Was,” for Wishful Thinking

A sure sign that you should use the subjunctive is when the word wish is used. A wish is the desire or hope for something that cannot or probably will not happen.

I wish I were the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He wishes his grammar were better.

I wish the stories about me were true, but I am not really the master of the universe.

She wishes she were at least five inches taller.

Here’s a tip: These phrases are never correct: I wish I was, I wish it was, he wishes he was, she wishes she was.

Always remember this rule about the usage of was and were: use were with expressions that are hypothetical, wishful, imagined, desired, doubtful, and otherwise contrary to fact—that is to say, not real.