A group of little girls was/were playing in the park.

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:05:45 -0600, Oleg Lego
said:

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:07:35 -0700, Bob Cunningham posted:

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:10:15 -0600, Oleg Lego
said:

[...]

I just love it when the idiot brigade drops by with a poorly
punctuated non-sequitur.

The brigade doesn't drop by as a monolithic unit. It's
composed of individuals, each presumably free to join in or
not. The brigade drop by.

But then we'd say the brigade members drop by.

We could say that, but it's easier to say correctly "The
brigade drop by", if that's what we mean.

An extreme example of hyperdevotion to apparent number could
be

The barracks doors flew open. A pair of irate
soldiers made its way to the center of the parade
ground, drew its pistols and shot each other dead.

A usage that I see too often in our newspaper can be
exemplified by "The couple was married and spent its
honeymoon in Niagara Falls". It clearly should be "The
couple were married and spent their honeymoon in ... ".

Two people are married to each other. "The couple was
married" leaves me wondering what it was married to.