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I have recently read both:

couple is getting married

couple are getting married

So which is actual usage?

Community
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168335
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  • The title, 'Couple was' or 'couple were' married?, differs from your question... 'couple is getting married' or 'couple are getting married'. Either way, 'Couple were married' is correct for the title of your question and 'Couple are getting married' is correct for the main body of you question. – GoodJuJu Nov 04 '17 at 23:20

1 Answers1

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From Ngrams, you can see that "couple were married" beats "couple was married". This is especially true for British English.

couple was/were married Ngram

Looking at the Ngram results for American and British English, while both forms are currently used roughly equally often in the U.S., hardly anybody says "the couple is getting married" in the U.K.

Peter Shor
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  • so both can be used, but mostly 'were' is used, however using the other form is not prohibited.. right? – 168335 Oct 03 '11 at 15:17
  • Both can definitely be used in American English, where there is currently a small bias towards "was" (40 years ago, the bias favored "were"). I'm not so sure about British English, where Google Ngrams shows that almost everybody uses "were". See this related question. Maybe somebody from the U.K. could comment on this. – Peter Shor Oct 03 '11 at 15:22