{"id":2201,"date":"2016-05-25T09:03:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T15:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2201"},"modified":"2020-11-25T11:16:55","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T17:16:55","slug":"a-couple-of-things-and-a-couple-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/effective-writing\/a-couple-of-things-and-a-couple-more\/","title":{"rendered":"A Couple of Things, and a Couple More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word\u00a0<em>couple<\/em>\u00a0literally means \u201ctwo,\u201d but it is often used to mean \u201can indefinite small number.\u201d So if you were to say, \u201cI only have a couple of dollars,\u201d you would probably not be called out if you really had three or four.<\/p>\n<p>However, your friend the grammar stickler might take exception if you said you had \u201ca couple dollars.\u201d Although \u201ca couple dollars\u201d is common in everyday speech, traditionalists insist on \u201ca couple\u00a0<em>of<\/em>\u00a0dollars.\u201d And since\u00a0<em>a couple of dollars<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t sound stuffy or pretentious, why leave\u00a0<em>of<\/em>\u00a0out?<\/p>\n<p>But things get tricky when\u00a0<em>couple<\/em>\u00a0is used with words and phrases of comparison, such as\u00a0<em>more, fewer<\/em>,\u00a0<em>too many<\/em>,<em>\u00a0too few<\/em>. Many people would say\u00a0<em>a couple of more dollars<\/em>, but in that construction the\u00a0<em>of\u00a0<\/em>is dropped:\u00a0<em>a couple more dollars<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>a couple too few dollars\u00a0<\/em>are correct. However, if we slightly revise those phrases,\u00a0<em>of<\/em> must be put back:\u00a0\u00a0<em>a couple of dollars more<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>a couple of dollars too few<\/em>\u00a0are correct.<\/p>\n<p>When the noun\u00a0<em>couple<\/em>\u00a0refers to two people, you often see it used as a singular:\u00a0<em>The couple was having dinner<\/em>. But the more one writes, the more one discovers that with\u00a0<em>couple<\/em>\u00a0the plural verb should be used unless there is an excellent reason not to.<\/p>\n<p>While it is true that<em>\u00a0The couple was having dinner\u00a0<\/em>is unobjectionable, what if we expand the sentence a bit. If the subject of a sentence starts out singular, it should remain singular. So if we wanted to say where the dinner took place, we would be forced to write<em>\u00a0The couple was having dinner in its home<\/em>. That is atrocious, but so is<em>\u00a0The couple was having dinner in their home<\/em>. Therefore, make it\u00a0\u00a0<em>The couple were having dinner in their home<\/em>. And make\u00a0<em>couple<\/em>\u00a0plural whenever possible (which is most of the time). You\u2019ll be in good company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*****<\/p>\n<p>We recently heard from a reader who objected to a sentence she found in one of our online quizzes:\u00a0\u00a0<em>We\u2019ll hire the applicant whom we talked with<\/em>. She urgently informed us that \u201cyou do not end a sentence with a preposition!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This \u201crule\u201d is the Walking Dead of English-grammar superstitions\u2014a festering pest that cannot be destroyed. We are scolded about it at least once a year, and without exception those who upbraid us offer no evidence to substantiate their claims. (That is because none exists.) So we hereby challenge anyone who still swears by this dubious principle to relocate the preposition in this sentence:\u00a0<em>Speak when you are spoken to<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word\u00a0couple\u00a0literally means \u201ctwo,\u201d but it is often used to mean \u201can indefinite small number.\u201d So if you were to say, \u201cI only have a couple of dollars,\u201d you would probably not be called out if you really had three or four. However, your friend the grammar stickler might take exception if you said you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-verbs"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}