LANGUAGE CORNER
Each Other/One Another
To Each His Other
Ronnie Matthew, a sub-editor at The Times of India living in Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, e-mailed this: "What's the difference, in usage, between 'each other' and 'one another'? Is 'each other' used in the case of two people and 'one another' in the case of more than two?"
Yes and no. The rule is clearly arbitrary — examine the words and it's hard to see why any distinction is made between the phrases. Designating "each other" for two and "one another" for more than two was the brainstorm of an obscure grammarian in the late 18th century; the phrases had been used interchangeably for centuries before, and have been since, by writers from Samuel Johnson to Noah Webster to E.L. Doctorow. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, the source for that history, says the rule was "cut out of the whole cloth" and "there is no sin in its violation." The venerable H.W. Fowler declared that "the differentiation is neither of present utility nor based on historical usage," and the 1990's reworking of his Modern English Usage concludes that belief in the rule "is untenable."
However: Although a needless complication, the supposed rule is prescribed as style — the sometimes arbitrary dicta that publications issue in the service of consistency — by such broadly influential outfits as The Associated Press and The New York Times. So while logic may not sanctify it, safety may.
— CJR, May/June 2000
