A certain plan

A friend of mine posed this on Facebook:

"... a certain schedule, budget, and plan is laid out"

Should it be "is" or "are" here?
The "certain" is meant to apply to schedule, budget, and plan.

I vote for "are" but I would have said, "... a certain schedule, a budget, and a plan are laid out"

As it's written, it should definitely be "are". I suppose the reason your friend wrote "is" might be that the schedule, budget and plan are all part of the same document, but as written they are three separate things.

The phrase "a certain plan" is probably best avoided if you're trying to say "a definitive plan", because a lot of readers will be catching echoes of "a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho..."

It shouldn't be either - it's just a generally poorly phrased comment. If 'are' was chosen then the sentence would have to read 'certain budgets, schedules and plans are laid out' - the word 'a' is singular. In order to stick as closely as possible to the quote you give the sentence would have to read 'a schedule, a budget and a plan are laid out'. In fact, I suspect the writer probably means much the same thing by 'plan' and 'schedule' - though not necessarily, of course. I suspect 'a schedule is laid out' might have been a better and more concise option.

Having said that, it's not worth falling out with your friend over - I've seen much, MUCH worse on Facebook and on LibraryThing.

(Though, the other side of my brain is now yelling "We're pedants, for gawd's sake! If grammar isn't worth falling out over, what is?'" So I take it back - you should contact this person immediately and tell him/her the friendship has no future.)

I think a friend who has a considered opinion on whether it is 'is' or 'are' is worth keeping :)

Being both a grammar pendant and an editor, I say, "A certain plan, including a budget and a schedule, is laid out." Wouldn't the schedule and the budget both have to be part of any decent plan? Or you could rearrange the three nouns as seems best given the actual situation. The surest path around a conundrum of syntax is often a rewrite.

Sticking strictly with the original question as is, I say, "are."