Bryan Garner's Usage Tip: each other. (Part 1 of 2) A

Your daily usage tip hot off the press.

Smarter words.
(From the new 5th edition of Garner's Modern English Usage.)

each other.

each other. A. And one another. Usage authorities have traditionally suggested that each other should refer to two people or entities <John and Bob helped each other>, one another to more than two <all of them loved one another>. Yet this 19th-century rule has also been undermined in the literature on usage—e.g.:

“A distinction is set up in the schools between each other and one another, according as the reference is to two or to more than two persons; and yet scarcely a good author can be found who does not use the two forms interchangeably.” Adams Sherman Hill, Our English 33 (1888).
“It has been maintained that each other should be used where only two are concerned, and one another where there are more than two; but the distinction is not necessary. The expressions are interchangeable.” John F. Genung, Outlines of Rhetoric 311–12 (1893).
“Failure to observe the distinction [between each other and one another] may be a technical fault, but it is not a serious offence.” Edward N. Teall, Putting Words to Work 283 (1940).
“Purists make a distinction between them, using each other for two things or persons only, and one another for more than two things or persons. In spite of Fowler’s rather perverse repudiation of it, this distinction is a convenient one, though so often ignored as not to have any real validity.” G.H. Vallins, Better English 48 (4th ed. 1957).

Many careful writers and editors will doubtless continue to observe the distinction, but no one else will notice.

LANGUAGE-CHANGE INDEX

each other for one another (i.e., for more than

two items): Stage 4

See tomorrow’s usage tip for the next installment.

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