Grammar Gripe

I don't want to sound like my third grade teacher, but many people who should know better continually make the same grammatical error and it makes me crazy. Do you remember the "subject and verb agreement" rules? A singular subject demands a singular verb, while a plural subject demands a plural verb. Yet, here is an example of what I hear or read every day. "There's twenty-six letters in the English alphabet." No, no, no! "There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet." I frequently hear this error made on radio and television news programs. I read this in the newspaper, in magazines, in instruction manuals and, of course, in web sites. This particular error is so common that I'm afraid it will soon become the accepted form in speech and in written documents. Daniel Schorr of National Public Radio commented recently that the one thing we are losing with the advent of "citizen journalism," is editing. He is so right.