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The justifications given in that essay leave a really bad taste in my mouth: > I believe using "comprised of" is poor writing, because > It's completely unnec
by p-e-w 3y ago
The justifications given in that essay leave a really bad taste in my mouth:
> I believe using "comprised of" is poor writing, because
> It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language.
That's true for many, many other words. In fact, most instances of definite and indefinite articles "add nothing to the language", since the actual information is in the noun. Just leave them out, right? "I go house."
> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things.
"To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, but not in the same sense.
> The etymology of the word does not support "comprised of".
That's irrelevant to the current meaning of the word. This is called an "etymological fallacy"[1].
> It's new. Many current Wikipedia readers were taught to write at a time when not one respectable dictionary endorsed "comprised of" in any way. It was barely ever used before 1970.
Good luck reading Wikipedia, or any newspaper article, if you are uncomfortable with language coined during the past half-century. What exactly is that "Internet" thing people keep talking about? Note that "The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionaries regard the form comprised of as standard English usage."[2]
The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised of', and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even though the term has been part of standard contemporary English for a long time."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprised_of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprised_of
- Isinlor 3y agoSlavic languages do perfectly fine without articles. As Polish speaker I say leave them out ;) .
- denton-scratch 3y ago> As Polish speaker I say leave them out "As Polish speaker, I say leave out"?
- bee_rider 3y agoI don’t love “is comprised of,” and think it can usually be replaced with something like “contains” or simply “is,” resulting in a better, more direct sentence. But I’m not going to go on a crusade against it.
- redmorphium 3y ago"My itinerary is comprised of four hotel stays." ---> "My itinerary is comPOSED of four hotel stays." or "My itinerary coNSISTS of four hotel stays." Much better.
- jasomill 3y ago"I'll be staying at four hotels."
- rvnx 3y agoThis. Simple, direct, and much more intelligible.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- prepend 3y ago“I’ll stay at four hotels.”
- yellowapple 3y ago"I plan on staying at four hotels.", if you want to more accurately preserve the original meaning (just because it's on the itinerary doesn't mean I'll actually be staying at all four hotels, but it does typically mean there's a plan I intend to follow).
- redmorphium 3y agoIt really depends on sentence flow. With the usual SVO order, the subject becomes the focus. If the context or dialogue goes like this: "Where are you staying for your vacation?" then the logical subject of the answer should come first, e.g. "I am staying ..." However if the lead-in focuses more on the itinerary rather than the traveler, e.g. "What is your plan? Can you describe your itinerary?" then it makes a lot of sense to start with "My itinerary involves..." or "My itinerary consists of..." or for a passive voice, "My itinerary is composed of..."
- riwsky 3y ago> That's irrelevant to the current meaning of the word. This is called an "etymological fallacy"[1]. Did you read your own link? It explicitly calls out absolute neglect of the etymology as fallacious, as well.
- stOneskull 3y ago> Just leave them out, right? "I go house." the ministry of truth is easier to write as minitrue, yeah.
- ttiurani 3y ago> I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even though the term has been part of standard contemporary English for a long time. At least I, as a non-native speaker, find the edited sentences always easier to read. They simply make the text better. As the entire point od Wikipedia is to make knowledge accessible with co-writing, I find it just wild that people would object to better language. So who exactly is imposing their preference on the world: the one making the text easier to read, or the one objecting to the edits?
- tysam_and 3y agoI find this to be a false equivalence. People can horribly misuse the phrase "comprised of". Bland articles that directly communicate the language can be more or less tasteful depending upon who is reading them. Almost assuredly sentences can be written without "comprised of" that are also definitely not bland. But classifying something you find easier to read as better language for everyone doesn't make it immediately true for everyone. Additionally, it's not about a person making text easier to read or not from one (or multiple peoples') perspectives -- this appears to be about someone going on a stylistic crusade en masse. Objecting to the edits being an act of 'imposing their preference on the world' feels similar to the political mirror-projection kind of argument that can happen. I think there is interesting discussion to be had (is it better? are there good ways to use it? when/where/how? what is the ethicality of editing articles like this? is a disclaimer wiki entry enough? etc etc), and maybe we can focus on that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fatfingerd 3y agoI can't see how eliminating a common misuse of an otherwise dead word wouldn't be clearer to nonnative speakers and less painful to the brains of native speakers. There are a lot of people who want to add dead vocabulary back to sound important and they'll succeed often enough with words that are at best unnecessary synonyms that convey no additional information. We don't really have to give them the benefit of the doubt when they do it completely wrong.
- pbreit 3y agoI read this and googled a bit and don't quite understand what the problem is with "comprised of". The author says this "The 9th district is comprised of all of Centerville" should be replaced by "The 9th district comprises all of Centerville"? That's it? Is there some way to see what edits were made?
- FabHK 3y ago> That's true for many, many other words. Well, yes, but other words aren’t wrong and irritating to many readers. The point is that the usage in question has several disadvantages, but zero redeeming features. > "To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, but not in the same sense. That’s not the point. “To shoot” and “to be shot” contain the same word, but mean opposite things, but that’s a well understood result of active vs passive voice, and nobody objects to that. However, imagine some people would start using “to be shot” to mean “to shoot”. So, they’d say “Peter was shot by Paul” to mean that Peter shot Paul, that is, Paul was shot by Peter. And then the dictionary would add that as a secondary meaning. Can’t you see how people might object to that?
- mock-possum 3y agoWell sure it’d be unsettling but like… what, are you just going to stop language from changing? Good luck with that. We’re just along for the ride, if people start using it that way, then that’s what it means now. Objecting to that is about as much use as to be pissed into the wind.
- Nevermark 3y agoIf language legitimately changes so a sentence or phrase has two opposite yet universally used meanings, (presumably resolved in each instance by context), it would still be better writing to avoid it when clarity of meaning is paramount. Encyclopedias are a good place to make as few assumptions and gambles as possible with regard to how a reader might comprehend what is written.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 317070 3y agoThose are just autantonyms, and English has plenty already. First you dust the cake, then you dust the table. The castle is impregnable. And if you add more collocial words, wicked now is good, but also means bad. When a song is cool, you mean it's hot. People tend to not object to that.
- ghayes 3y ago> > It’s illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. Auto-antonyms are actually quite common in English. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
- jonny_eh 3y agoInteresting. I wonder if the word "presently" could count. It can mean both "soon" or "currently".
- Eisenstein 3y agoMomentarily is similar. Could mean 'for a moment' or 'in a moment'.
- singleshot_ 3y agoThat's an arguable factoid.
- grammarxcore 3y agoOne of my favorites is “nonplussed,” because its evolution into two opposite things is both generational and split across British vs North American English.
- two_handfuls 3y agoParent is still correct about it being illogical though.
- inimino 3y ago"impose my preference on everyone else" By fixing a common mistake on a collaboratively edited encyclopedia? What are you even talking about? Do you have any idea what an editor does at the New York Times?
- prepend 3y agoBut it’s not a mistake to everyone, it’s just a mistake in this person and some others eyes. But it’s an accepted usage of the words. I’m not exactly familiar with specific editorial duties, but it seems NYTimes editors allow “comprised of” [0] so they don’t seem to correct all occurrences of “comprised of” by changing text to “composed of.” [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comprised+of%22+site%3Anytimes.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comprised+of%22+site%3Any...
- inimino 3y agoYes it's a mistake exactly in the eyes of those who know the meaning of the word. "com" + "prise" = "grasp together". An error can be more common than the correct usage and still be an error. Would you accept "A table setting is included of plate, fork, knife and spoon." as correct usage? What if "included" becomes rarely used in the future and this incorrect usage becomes relatively popular? Would that make it correct? Nonsense. The job of an editor is to raise the level of the writing before it goes to print, including fixing common mistakes. A professional writer would just learn something from it and improve. What I'm amazed by is the number of people who seem outraged, like someone's right to freedom of expression is being violated because someone came along after and removed some mistakes and improved the writing, literally a Wikipedia editor just doing the job of an editor. And then a whole essay has to be written justifying it, and that's still not enough, and we are all discussing it even further. It's a remarkable phenomenon. It makes me wonder if software developers are as defensive about common programming mistakes. If so we might have a bit of a problem.
- dllthomas 3y ago> "com" + "prise" = "grasp together". This is a terrible argument first because etymology is not meaning, but more importantly because "grasp together" doesn't seem to rule out the errant meaning. "This table setting grasps together a plate, a cup, and several pieces of silverware." seems if anything less wrong than "A plate, a cup, and several pieces of flatware grasp together this table setting."
- hulitu 3y agoRomanes eunt domum was good enough. /s
- lIl-IIIl 3y ago"I go house" is not standard English. When they said 'There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of"' it is implied that those other ways are standard English. >The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised of', and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even though the term has been part of standard contemporary English for a long time." But they are not imposing their preference. They are making an improvement that has a consensus and the edit is appreciated by the authors of the text and Wikipedia editors. Look at the "Reaction to the project" and the barn star awards they got. People whose text was edited to remove "comprised of" thanked this person for their work. Only 1% of the time the edit was reverted. Their work is overwhelmingly viewed as a good thing for Wikipedia.
- adjav 3y agoThere is no "standard English." There sure as hell isn't a consensus that "comprised of" is incorrect, or it wouldn't have been used over 90k times.
- lIl-IIIl 3y agoIt is a consensus reached by the Wikipedia editing community, or the edits wouldn't be so overwhelmingly accepted. There are probably more than 90k typos in Wikipedia that doesn't mean they are correct. "Standard English" is a poor choice of words, but I'm not sure how to describe what "I go house" is. Not grammatically correct English?
- prepend 3y agoIt seems like the editor is just fishing for a reason to make lots of edits and backed into logic so their stuff doesn’t get reverted. I love wikis and knowledge bases but this is exactly the kind of stuff that detracts. On one case, who cares what this person does with their time. On the other case, it wastes the attention of 90k authors who need to figure out whether they care and have their writing style overridden by a rando. I think the correct way to do this is to appeal to a writing style that gets argued over (sometimes perpetually) and when settled then the 90k edits can be made. This edit would be an argument presented to change the style guide. Since “comprised of” is proper usage I doubt it would be proscribed in the style guide. In my org I used to waste minutes of having writings where people expressed preferences for “and” vs “&” or Oxford comma or whether data are plural and edited things back and forth. Then I just found a style guide and adopted it and ask that people not revert changes based on preferences that break the style guide.
- klyrs 3y ago> On the other case, it wastes the attention of 90k authors who need to figure out whether they care and have their writing style overridden by a rando. On the other hand, if you're editing wikipedia and you expect your writing to not be subject to rando edits, you won't last long.
- zephrx1111 3y agoSorry, but as a non-native English speaker, “compromised of” confuses me more, I guess mostly because I was exposed to the other meaning too much.
- Izkata 3y ago"Compromised" and "comprised" are different words.
- soraminazuki 3y ago> > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language. I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas. In the novel, the totalitarian state of Oceania uses that exact same justification to promote the use of the Newspeak language: > After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? ... Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
- logicchains 3y ago>I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is "notright".
- robswc 3y agoI can get behind the "notlight" but "notright"... feels like something my brain would never get used to haha.
- Izkata 3y agoBecause based on the words it's composed of, it's different from "left" - it would include "forward" and "backward". Similarly for "notlight" implying including twilight, which "dark" does not.
- robocat 3y ago> twilight Perhaps that is lightandnotlight. We almost have notlight in English: unlit. An unlit room feels twilighty to me. > notright Left in Esperanto: maldekstra I can’t imagine why a language designer would choose “mal” as the prefix for “not”. In English and Spanish (two common languages), mal has some bad connotations (malodour, malady, malfeasance, malo, malformed). Let’s try the opposite: “not left” is definitely something different from “right” - urrrgggh. “Do not go left” doesn’t mean to go right. However it looks like Esperanto also has “liva”. Turnu liven tuj post la angulo ~= Turn left immediately after the corner.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoI suspect that this is an obsessive-compulsive thing. So as long as they're not making the articles worse then I say just let them do it if they need to.
- ouid 3y agothe justifications in the essay might be poor, but it is sensible to restrict the language of wikipedia to be as unambiguous as possible, given its status as "authoritative on most topics". For an example in the other direction, wikipedia should ban the word inflammable. Its original meaning, which some authors will definitely prefer (if they are pedants), is entirely the opposite meaning of the colloquial meaning. Should wikipedia pick a meaning for the word, which people are free to ignore, or just outright ban it? (except in etymology wikipedia, where it is an example of a word, rather than part of the explanatory grammar)
- pclmulqdq 3y ago"Comprises" is frequently used in patent writing, but I have rarely seen it elsewhere. I think its use, both in patents and normal English, has a particular connotation, that "is comprised of" doesn't carry otherwise: * When I hear "X comprises Y and Z," I think that the author is saying that X includes Y and Z as its key parts, but is not precluding the existence of other parts * When I hear "X is comprised of Y and Z," I think Y and Z are the only parts of X This might have originally been a misuse of the word "comprise" to mean "compose," but I feel like that's a pretty big distinction in meaning.
- FabHK 3y agoInteresting. I think when an author says "X comprises Y and Z”, they assert precisely that Y and Z constitute X, that is, are the only parts of X. Otherwise the author should have written “X contains” or “X includes Y and Z”.
- coding123 3y agoNo one is going to fight this person trying to erase a word though.
- devnullbrain 3y ago>Note that "The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionaries regard the form comprised of as standard English usage." I've never found this a convincing argument. Think of when you use a dictionary: it's because you want to understand a word that you don't understand in its context. If it didn't include all uses, the dictionary wouldn't help you. A dictionary a tool to help consume language. If you want help to produce language, you refer to a style guide. The barrier for acceptability is much higher there.
- sgustard 3y agoThe most relevant argument is: this is an encyclopedia, its very purpose is to be precise. And words like "comprise" are specifically about defining the meaning and composition of terms. If the encyclopedia is sloppy with words why does it even exist? Another point: the era of a human doing rote language cleanup is nearly over; surely an LLM can do better?
- notatoad 3y agoyou're right that the essay is poorly argued. it all amounts to a whole lot of words saying basically "i don't like it" and trying to claim opinions as fact. but also, i agree. i don't like it either. so i'm not sure the whole essay is necessary, but i appreciate the work this person is doing to remove the bad writing from wikipedia.
- croisillon 3y agoi don't know if it's illogical but there are a lot of words that mean two opposite things: http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html
- ezekiel68 3y agoExactly. You know what else is completely unnecessary? The Eiffel Tower. Big Ben. The reflecting pool at the Mall in Washington, DC. Ten million other thngs. That something is 'completely unnecessary' is a completely insufficient reason to annihilate it, especially it it has wormed its way into common experience.
- kevinpet 3y agoForgive me if I decline to take writing advice from someone who tells me "I go house" is meaningful English. It isn't. It's violates the rules of grammar, rules which are a description of the normal English as used by members of the English speaking community. English expects you to specify whether you go into, towards, around, out of, or through the window of a house, or the house that we already know we are talking about, or Joe's house.
- dmonitor 3y agojust wait until they learn about the etymology of awful and awesome. both come from the word awe, but mean completely opposite things.
- drewcoo 3y ago>> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. And to support your stance against that, I offer this: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their... They can take "cleave" from my cold, dead hands!
- phoenixreader 3y agoI was going to mention “sanction”. Happy to learn more words like that!
- riffraff 3y agoOh that misses my favorite, "egregiously" which means both done very well and done exceptionally wrong, the latter used more commonly, the former archaic. But in my language we only use the original positive meaning, so I was deeply confused by English using it for a long time.
- bombcar 3y agoThere’s a number that change over time; awful and terrible for example. Very old hymns talk about how awful and terrible God is, for example.
- yellowapple 3y agoI mean, it's accurate either way, at least in the Old Testament.
- riffraff 3y agoAh yes, this is indeed the subject of a Terry Pratchett bit about elves in "Lords and Ladies" > Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.
- morsch 3y agoArticles obviously add information: is it a specific, known house you are going to (I'm going to the house) or a non-specific/not previously referred to (I'm going to a house)? When it's your own house you're going to, you could argue the definite article wouldn't add anything, and the phrasal verb to go home drops it (ie. I'm going home), though adding an article is possible and changes the meaning (I'm going to the/a home, in the context of a home for the elderly or some such).
- denton-scratch 3y ago> is it a specific, known house you are going to "I'm going house" contains less meaning than "I'm going to [a] house". Without the preposition, it could mean "I'm leaving [a] house" ("I'm going from house").
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- emodendroket 3y agoI would leave the argument but tweak the example given to support: it "adds nothing to the language" that we have many more or less perfectly synonymous terms, such as purse/handbag, pop/soda, and so on.
- regularfry 3y agoThey're regional though. "Purse" and "handbag" don't have the same meaning in the UK, and "pop" and "soda" are rare in their US meaning. In this case "compose" and "comprise" do have different meanings. "Compose" has the sense of "put together" whereas "comprise" is closer to "contain". You'd never say "contained of" unless you were going for a really archaic sentence construction. I think it's less clear that "comprised of" is incorrect in all cases, but I do agree it sounds ugly and that there's almost always going to be a better phrasing available.
- emodendroket 3y agoWikipedia themselves maintain a page about "comprised of" that has citations going back to the 18th Century. I think it has been long enough to concede that it has the supposedly objectionable meaning.
- tysam_and 3y agoPlus, generally languages are comprised of, among other things, a hodgepodge of colloquialisms that add flavor to the discourse.