[Revolting cat!]

You say you write for a living. Your angle on the following, please.

This morning’s WSJ, page C12:

“There are a couple of flaws in this strategy.”

“a couple”, while it may contain two or even three of some element members in acceptable everyday usage, IS singular, as indicated by the ‘a’ article. Therefore we ought to write “There is a couple”, no? But this is such a common error nowadays that I expect to hear arguments that such usage is correct. Is it? Double GRRRRRH!

“Mr Funeral Director, there is a bereaved couple stiffly awaiting you in your office”, and not “Mr Funeral Director there are a couple ...” etc! In the strategy above, there are some two or three flaws, but still, there is a single couple of those flaws, dammit! “There are a” is pidgin English in my opinion.

I figure that at least one other person read this piece beside the author, his editor. Hey, may I have the job of editor at the Wall Street Journal?

[Melas]

a couple”, while it may contain two or even three of some element members in acceptable everyday usage, IS singular, as indicated by the ‘a’ article. Therefore we ought to write “There is a couple”, no? But this is such a common error nowadays that I expect to hear arguments that such usage is correct. Is it? Double GRRRRRH!

It's correct. English is full of exceptions, and collective nouns are often the source of these exceptions. My MLA style guide devotes no less than a page and a half to the word "couple" alone.

[AnAmericanMother]

"Couple" is one of those awful words. I avoid it when I can. While technically it's singular, it's really a collective noun, as "couple" doesn't necessarily mean two - it can mean more than two e.g. "a couple of minutes". And in common speech it's a plural. So -- is a newspaper article common speech or formal speech? Probably the former.

But when you're talking about counting foxhounds, it's worse. Foxhounds are always counted in pairs, a "couple", no plural, and when you report the total number it's described as "twelve couple" = 24 hounds, or in the case of an odd number "four and a half couple" = 9 hounds. As Winston Churchill said, "That is something up with which I will not put."