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I was considering downloading the Grammarly app and was reading the reviews. I cut and pasted the following review just to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes:

“When I discovered Grammarly it seemed like a no-brainer solution. It allows me to have confidence that I have two pairs of eyes on everything that I write.”

Sara H. Talent Acquisition Manager

I admit I sometimes need help with the proper usage of the English language but basically I’ve gotten along on just what ‘sounds right’.

Which is correct: “I have two pairs of eyes” or “I have two pair of eyes”? I’m probably wrong but the second one just sounds right.

Second question: She stated, “It allows me to have confidence that I have two pairs of eyes on everything that I write.” If she has “two pairs of eyes” checking her grammar, wouldn’t that mean she’s reading it with four eyes?

Come to think of it, that last sentence just sounds funny to me. She has confidence that she has two pairs of eyes on everything? Does she have a problem with her eyes wandering and Grammarly helps her focus, therefore she has confidence in Grammarly? I’m sure I’ve made tons of grammatical and punctuation errors just in the questions on this page so I will stop nit-picking!

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The plural of "pair" is "pairs" (ref: Collins Dictionary). Phrases like "two pair" I have only ever heard used to describe a poker hand (ref: Wiktionary) or similar.

In your quote, Sara only has one pair of eyes, the second pair is a metaphorical pair belonging to Grammarly.

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  • Wow, thanks Andy, you’re so right. You explained both points in a way that I easily understood. I’m so glad that I asked and thanks so much for you’re input!
    – Donna Guglielmo
    Commented Apr 5, 2019 at 1:09
  • You might say "Could I have two hundred of those?" but you'd say "two pairs of those". Some number words are invariant, others are used in the plural. Very confusing.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Dec 3, 2021 at 13:55
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This was more common in the past. It applied to a wide range of nouns where the semantics parsed as two pair = four. But prior to about 1830 two pair of X was more common than two pairs of X in British English. It declined slower in the US, where the crossover was about 1850. And it should surprise no one that I still use that form for nearly everything. I come from a long line of people inhabiting the linguistic backwaters of English. My grandfather was in the English Army in India under the British Raj prior to WWI and I describe my dialect as late Edwardian.

Having said that, the decline in this usage has been steady since then, at least among professional writers. Currently, according to Google Ngrams, two pairs of eyes is 15 times as common as two pair of eyes in American English, and 40 times as common in British. For shoes, it's 9:1 and 20:1, respectively.

While I will use pairs of for mandatory plurals like pants, scissors, and spectacles; even these got the pair of treatment in the past. Benjamin Franklin described his bifocals as "two pair of spectacles in one."

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    OED says: “After a numeral pair was until recently frequently used in the singular form”. So kids who don’t talk to older people or read anything published before their recent births won’t be used to it. Their most recent citation of sense I.1.a.iii—the one with the unmarked plural after a numeral—was from 1985, although its heyday was before 1904 where an earlier edition marked it as diminishing. It was this way in Middle English, and they provide many citations since America’s founding, but it's now considered “regional” at best.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 25 at 17:56

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