On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 14:31:05 -0700, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote: > > I was going to object to this statement. I went to my good friend "Google" > to look up some references but "a number of" is very common and thus > difficult to search for. Not at all: "+a number +of * have" -- about 1,280,000 results "+a number +of * has" -- about 28,800 results