On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 09:00:53 +1000, "52%" wrote:

Sir Gregory Hall, Esq. wrote:

I pity you land lubbers. Yes, YOU! I don't know
anybody posting to Usenet who isn't a dullard
landlubber. Capt. Skippy of the "Flying Pig" has
even turned into a land lubber as I predicted a
couple years ago.

Greg, if I could just interrupt for a moment... the absence of the
preposition /of/ in your sentence above: ie.. "as I predicted a couple
years ago" disturbs my comprehension of the English language - to my
mind it is regional laziness...'coarse, I might be wrong about this, but
what is your take on this common Americanism?...tia...

*Of* is simply not needed there. "As I predicted a couple *of* years
ago" would sound verbose, afflicted and extraneous. "A couple years
ago I went to sea" vs. "a couple of years ago I went to sea" has the
same meaning but the economy of words is lacking in the latter case.

Now, "there is a dram *of* whiskey" would be correct whereas "there
is a dram whiskey" would be incorrect.

Nor would the stylist type "a couple those" instead of "a couple of
those." A couple years, a couple days, a couple months are all units
of time. The *of* is extraneous.

--
Sir Gregory