On Monday, I read a post in which the words “a couple things” appeared several times. The post was well written and I agreed with many of the points made by it’s author. However those few words “a couple things” set my teeth on edge. Surely the correct way to demonstrate that one is speaking of several things as opposed to a single object is to say “a couple of things” rather than “a couple things”? Apart from “a couple things” being grammatically incorrect, it strikes me as being somewhat lazy to omit one word “of” when writing “a couple things”. The amount of time saved by not including “of” is, surely so insignificant as to be unworthy of the effort entailed in so doing?

I have also seen the words “couple things” rendered with both the “a” and the “of” omitted. I struggle to understand why literate individuals would…