We did two newsletters last year on was vs. were to cover a couple of different grammatical rules: collective nouns and the subjunctive mood. And while you didn't struggle on the subjunctive mood quiz, "couple" proved trickier:

"Was" won out on the newsletter quiz, but when we posted the same question on LinkedIn, we got the opposite response. There are more than a couple of ways to use "couple." One is that it's essentially a collective noun meaning a set of romantic partners, but even then, the verb choice varies. Here's how we resolved the question last year:

The short answer is that it's not always correct to use "was" with "couple," nor is it always correct to use "were." It depends on the context.

Here's how we explain it in Stylebot's style guide entry: Are you writing about the couple doing something together or to each other, or are you referring to them as a unit?

Most of the time, it's the former. The sentence in last week's quiz is similar to the one in our style guide, which reads: "The couple were married for five years before they decided to divorce." So our answer is "were."

However, it's not wrong to use "was." You could make a case that they're acting as a unit in a marriage. But they've each decided to join together to create a unit, and only when they do things together as that unit should you use singular verbs. Here's the example sentence in our style guide: "Each couple is bringing a casserole to the party."

All right, you can pat yourself on the back, because this is the end of our close-call quiz reviews. You performed well on all the other quizzes last year, but you can always let us know if there's something else you'd like us to review.

❤ Team Stylebot

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