Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
> 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."
And to support your stance against that, I offer this:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their...
They can take "cleave" from my cold, dead hands!
But in my language we only use the original positive meaning, so I was deeply confused by English using it for a long time.
> 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.
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).
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.
"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").
"My itinerary is comPOSED of four hotel stays."
or
"My itinerary coNSISTS of four hotel stays."
Much better.
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..."
"Consists of" creates a minimum bound, not an exact amount.
For that matter, meaning was already lost in the original post: If "comprised of" was used in the original sentence, it would mean at least one of the hotels was a destination itself rather than just a place to stay (a historic building or something, for example).
To make your “comprised” example correct, I guess it would have to be something like “the alphabet is comprised of five vowels, twenty consonants, and Y, which can be either.”
(Note: Wikipedia lists W as also sometimes a vowel now?)
This is an OK sentence, probably because the alphabet is not very complicated. But we’re basically stuck describing the whole thing in one sentence because of the use of “comprised.”
If we’d gone with “contains,” we’d have more flexibility, we could break it down and do one component per sentence, for example.
It isn’t always wrong, it just makes a lot of decisions for you and they aren’t always optimal.
Did you read your own link? It explicitly calls out absolute neglect of the etymology as fallacious, as well.
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?
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.
I think that phrase is always incorrect. I suspect the problem is that people aren't used to words that take a list as their direct argument, like "comprise".
Wikipedia leans heavily to descriptivism (as do nearly all lexicons, these days). So there's no incorrect usage; there's only usage that jars, for some people.
I don't go around telling people they're ignorant because they can't speak their mother-tongue properly. That would simply be rude. But English text intended for publication should be correct English; it shouldn't be garbled, whether because it's written by a non-native speaker, or a native speaker who isn't well-read.
That implies that there is such a thing as "correct English". This seems obvious to me, but that's exactly what descriptivists deny.
Let's not get into whether "literally" is a synonym for "figuratively".
What seems like perfect English to you is not perfect to everyone.
Disagree. The language I speak didn't exist 800 years ago. The Anglo-saxons wouldn't have understood me, and I wouldn't have understood them.
And there were barely a billion human beings just 800 years ago - forget about thousands of years.
I didn't mention "prescriptivism", although it's obviously the opposite of descriptivism.
I thiink you mistake "prescriptivism" for a sort of law-making,like grammar-nazis. I mean something more like a general acceptance that words do have particular meanings, and that it's possible to be wrong about the meaning or use of a word.
I also wouldn't base your opinions of what makes for good English on the ramblings of one Wikipedian whose primary argument seems to be that they had to work hard to learn to use the word a particular way and so everyone else should for the rest of time.
They said "find the edited sentences always easier to read" and that's valuable regardless if you're a native speaker or not. Of course, what "better language" is as subjective as "clean code" so probably won't reach any consensus there.
But all of this is highly subjective in the end, so everyone's opinion is equally worth, native speaker or not.
> I find it just wild that people would object to better language.
They're either saying that their own sense of what is more legible is enough to define what is better, or they're buying into the pedantic arguments in TFA.
As to what is easier to read, I think the English Wikipedia should be written to be legible to native English speakers. This is better for everyone: native English speakers can read their Wikipedia, and English learners get exposed to actual English usage rather than a simplified version.
In this case, it's not obvious to me that any substantial portion of the English-speaking population sincerely gets confused by "comprised of". It feels much more like the insistence on not ending sentences in prepositions: a rule for the sake of having a rule.
EDIT: In fact, "comprised of" recently overtook "comprises" in published books:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22comprised+o...
Side note, there is an actual "simplified english" wikipedia. So even early learners who want a simplified resource have one aside from regular Wikipedia. https://simple.wikipedia.org/
It was a 30 second runaway comment and the latter part clearly doesn't hold up against scrutiny.
That subjectivity doesn’t equate to the equal worth of all opinions. It just means that no one opinion can be considered universal.
That lack of universality doesn’t mean that picking any one direction is as good as picking any other.
If I strongly prefer a Victorian style, giving my preference equal weight is likely to make the content far less valuable, because my preference is not a common one.
It would be necessary to examine the goals behind the content: the audience it is intended for, the desired effect on that audience, the nuances lost by preferring audience B over Audience A, the impact of that loss, etc.
Everyone should be allowed to have a preference, absolutely, but applying individual preferences to content does not lead to equivalent outcomes.
Also, considering that plenty of non-native English speakers read the English Wikipedia, there is plenty of value in the English writing in the English Wikipedia being maximally clear without sacrificing the intended meaning of the text. Dismissing feedback out of hand on the basis of "well the person giving the feedback ain't a native English speaker" misses the point of Wikipedia being a resource for everyone.
Broadening this beyond Wikipedia, the English language itself "is comprised of" countless words and grammatical structures yanked straight out of other languages, often by non-native speakers importing features of their native languages for all sorts of reasons. Knowing this history, I hereby authorize non-native speakers to critique the language and elements thereof; it's just as much their language as it is mine, and they therefore have just as much a right to it as I do.
What tiny fraction of one percent of the edits would you estimate you have actually read?
1. Non-native speakers lack the competence necessary to make such pronouncements.
It’s false to deny that many non-native speakers acquire near-native competence. So if we think that ordinary native speakers have the right to pronounce on these questions, at least some particularly skilled non-native speakers should too. Perhaps the claim then is that there’s a high standard that only a few native speakers and no non-native speakers reach. It’s unclear what would motivate that view; given that language is something we all use, it is doubtful that e.g. the perspicacity of a particular construction should only be commented upon by the most skilled speakers.
2. Native speakers’ claims to influence languages should have priority over those of non-native speakers.
We might simply view this as obvious, in which case there’s something of a conflict of interest. I think the more plausible argument is grounded in the use of language. Someone who never uses French will not really have particularly important opinions on its use. The problem here is that it’s unclear why native speakers’ intuitions are really more important. The English language is surely just as important to a Nigerian civil servant who operates nearly entirely in English as it is to one in Whitehall. The difference between non-native speakers and native speakers don’t seem relevant unless we take being a native speaker per se to be of import.
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?
"As Polish speaker, I say leave out"?
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?
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.
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.
(Ross, Act 4, Scene 3, Macbeth)
"Inflammable" is taught to be avoided.
So are things that mean opposite things depending on locale, like "tabling" an issue. It may be ok within a local group, but would be avoided in writing inside a multinational corporation.
Everything is objected to, that’s not sufficient for a decision. It’s the reason or volume of objecting.
Just saying there’s some objection is the Twitter fallacy. It could be one person, or even me, or it could be 100% of editors.
There probably ain't much we can realistically do about that, though. Words get misused until they're redefined all the time ("literally" being the popular contemporary example). Such are the joys of English being descriptivist.
the ministry of truth is easier to write as minitrue, yeah.
Auto-antonyms are actually quite common in English.
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?
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%3Any...
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.
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."
Well, ok, but we are not criticizing use of "comprise" but of "comprised of".
This table setting grasps together [three things].
This table setting comprises three things.
This table setting [together grasps] three things.
These are all correct.
*This table setting is grasped of a plate, cup, and flatware.
*This table setting is comprised of a plate, cup and flatware.
*This is grasped-together of a plate, cup, and flatware.
These are all wrong, for the same reason (so it can't be the Oxford comma).
If you wouldn't say it out loud with "comprised of" replaced by "included of", then it's wrong. That's the simple rule.
The backwards version is "The plate, cup, and flatware is comprised of the place setting" means "The plate, cup, and flatware is the total-grasping-together of the place setting."
It becomes clear if you write it this way how awkward it is, and the preposition clearly seems like the wrong one, so this is why the standard advice is just to avoid this confused, clunky phrasing.
You talk a lot here, but none of it actually follows. People write "is comprised of" because they confused it with "is composed of". "Com-pose" means "place together"; doing the same things does not make clear which should be which way 'round.
For the record, I kinda like having a separate word for "makes up" versus "is made up of" and would prefer people stop confusing the two. I just don't think we need garbage arguments in support.
Why not? Plenty of English words evolved this way. What's the problem exactly?
In linguistic terms, "comprised of" in English is commonly accepted and understood, and usage almost always overrides "logic" or other rules and regularities in the language.
>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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is "notright".
Similarly for "notlight" implying including twilight, which "dark" does not.
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.
Well, there's also the Latin word "sinister" which has a very different meaning in English... Kinda seems like a common theme.
“maldekstra” doesn't actually mean “not right” — mal in Esperanto more precisely means “opposite.” Left is opposite of right, and so malmaldekstra (opposite of the opposite of right) is still right (dekstra).
“Not right” in Esperanto doesn't exactly mean left, either, just like in in English. That'd be ne + dekstra = nedesktra.
http://www.anmal.uma.es/Numero9/Forment.htm
Joan Bastardas habla de la extrañeza de la existencia de la palabra ensinistrar del catalán, puesto que tiene un significado claramente positivo a pesar de ser derivado de siniestro-a. «... ensinistrar que no deixa de sorprendre els qui s´acosten al català des d´altres llengües romàniques, en què les idees d´habilitat i aptesa s´associen amb la mà dreta i no amb la mà esquerra, el castellà adiestrar, l´italià addestrare; en francès hi ha dexterité, però també en català hi ha destresa i destre-a 'hàbil', 'expert', i també maldestre, com el francès maladroit». (Bastardas 1996: 26)
la contraposición entre la bondad y la justicia — simbolizados por la derecha — y la maldad, el egoísmo —relacionados con la izquierda—.If you wanted to be understood, it'd be better to say maldekstren though. I'd never heard of liv-, English Wiktionary lists it as "neologism, nonstandard" and Reta Vortaro as "malofte" (infrequent).
The most confoundingly powerful feature of language is ambiguity: on one hand, you can't take it literally; on the other hand, you don't have to.
A better source might be George Orwell's actual, explicit opinions on politics and the English language:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Orwell certainly did not take an "anything goes" approach to language, which is essentially what you and others argue for, in the mistaken belief that you're somehow striking a blow at totalitarianism. From my perspective, your position is much closer to the Newspeak ethos than that of someone who actually cares about correct usage.
I've answered your question, now I have one for you: Did you even glance at the link?
I'm sorry, these epistemologically relativist arguments lead to utterly absurd conclusions. How does wikipedia work at all? How can we ever make judgements about anything?
It's bad Cartesianism. Just because we can't know something absolutely doesn't mean we can't know anything. Just because language changes doesn't mean there's no such thing as correct and incorrect usage.
That also doesn't mean "anything goes" either, obviously, since we do clearly speak a mutually comprehensible dialect through no intentional coordination. It's an interesting subject! You could stand to have some curiosity about its actual mechanics, there's a lot to be learned that is invisible to you if you've already decided how it should work.
I could engage your other points, but why bother
> Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Language is indeed consciously shaped. Look at the history of Italian. It doesn't just happen, and Wikipedia definitely doesn't just happen.
And if you disagree with Orwell, fine, just don't trot him out in support of your points. Which was my original point.
That's what language is. That's how language works.
I love Orwell, but he was flat wrong in that essay. He was playing at being a linguist and showing his ignorance.
Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use).
> style guides
Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, the function of providing a common style (that’s why they are called style guides, rather than language guides.)
He introduced American spelling and American English.
By constrast the Oxford English Dictionary was created by lexicographers intent on mapping the usage of English across space and time, they created multiple entries for each form | usage of root words and added copious notes (in the full multi volume OED editions) regarding first usage, alternate spellings, regional changes, etc.
The OED is a descriptive dictionary.
Yes, he was.
And while some of his reforms caught on and remain in use to this day, his approach to dictionaries generally did not. When I said dictionaries do not do that, the verb tense was significant.
Webster lived 200 years ago, and today prescriptivism is rejected by the overwhelming majority of linguists, because it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is. Prescriptivism is about as well supported as phrenology, and shares many of its discriminatory goals. It was something people made up, that turned out to not make any actual sense, and that was subsequently abandoned by almost everyone.
Webster can instruct people on how to correctly write "Webster Language". But he cannot instruct people on how to correctly write English. English is whatever its users say and write. No other sensible definition exists.
I sure haven't stated "my position" in any of my previous comments. But assuming it refers to common english, I'm reminded of another "1984" concept: doublethink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
Compare this:
> common english is Newspeak
with this:
> War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength
The similarity is uncanny.
> A better source might be
... the actual book being discussed?
> https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Exactly which part of Orwell's opinion did you find relevant to this discussion and how does it relate to yours? This is missing from your comment.
> which is essentially what you and others argue for,
Please don't put words in my or anyone else's mouth to make your point. It's extremely disrespectful.
> The similarity is uncanny.
Is it extremely disrespectful to point out that your previous comment is defending the position that "to comprise is to compose"?
Second, the phrase is "comprised of," not "to comprise."
Finally, I'd also like to point out that the editor and all people in this thread clearly knows how the phrase is used today. What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conveying meaning?
See this is what I mean when I say that your position is closer to the Newspeak ethos. What's wrong with ungood, after all? It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.
The Newspeak language eradicates words on the basis that they're redundant. The Wikipedia editor went to eradicate a phrase using the same justification. There's an obvious parallel here.
> It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.
This is a fact that holds true regardless of one's opinion. Yet, you're fallaciously framing this as an opinion to make it look like Oceania and I hold the same opinion.
When it comes to my actual opinion, I favor languages spoken as is. Newspeak, on the others hand, is an artificially restricted one. The false equivalence you made between these two conflicting positions can only be explained as doublethink.
Why people think they're entitled to their own ignorance is quite beyond me.
Second, you say Orwell isn't a linguist, and language just happens, but then you explicitly reference his fictional account of a prescribed language. Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist, and political forces can shape languages, you just don't think that happens with English. Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago? Just as Dante's works acquired a prescriptive force for the Italian that was once highly regional, but needed standardization to support the nation-state.
I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.
Similar to David Foster Wallace's essay on English, we can either naively push the descriptivist line, or we can accept that "the powers that be" do indeed shape our language, and try to have our own voices heard, for what English ought to be.
So we can rail against the Newspeak that some editor on Wikipedia is supposedly forcing on us. We can say it's literally 1984. It's ungood! And we can happily return to talking about grokking and gatekeeping and unaliving, and undocumented immigrants, and unhoused people, and utilizing the new library, believing these words are good because they happened and that they happened because they're good.
You're misreading me: I'm saying that English didn't come into existence by fiat, and that it doesn't evolve through fiat most of the time. English, being a natural language as opposed to a constructed one, evolves naturally.
> Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago?
That doesn't change the fact they're descriptive. It also doesn't change the fact linguistics is descriptive.
> I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.
Well, you can get a degree in linguistics and learn what "descriptivism" actually means, then, because you certainly don't know it now.
You seem to be arguing that descriptivism is just what linguistics "does", therefore it does not inherently contradict prescriptivism? Because they have two separate roles. And if descriptivists stayed in their lane, and allowed prescription where obviously necessary (like when teaching a language) then we wouldn't be having this argument in the first place.
But if descriptivists turn around and say "therefore thou shalt not prescribe"، then we do have a problem, and descriptivists are indeed naive, they are the real prescribers of an ill-conceived political program.
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)
* 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.
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.
Another point: the era of a human doing rote language cleanup is nearly over; surely an LLM can do better?
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.
Whenever I come across the word "utilize" in WP, I change it to "use" (with the edit comment "Don't utilize utilize"). Nobody's ever reverted me for that.
I think there is a proper use for the verb "utilize": it means "to render useful". But usually, it's just a substitute for "use" that sounds more erudite, or something. I think to utilize something is to take something that is useless, and turn it into something useful. That's not the same as using the thing.
Wickedly Pernicious.
Acronyms are confusing.
But some people also say AC -acronyms confuse.
I thought of a byzantine WordPress site with editing history or something as well, for a moment, despite the context.
Wait, WP for Wikipedia isn't even an acronym, just an abbreviation!
If you read this far, sorry for wasting your time.
I'm still learning :high_five:
[Edit] I generally don't use such acronyms without spelling the term out in full first. But spelling things out in full every time comes across as wordy and pedantic.
And, in defense of WP, W would not be a better option really, except for URLs.
Ironically, my locale's WP edition has failed to or didn't want to adopt /w/ instead of /wiki/ as the leading path segment for Wikipedia articles, as opposed to the English edition.
Also, thinking about this makes me want to search for edit wars and discussion about US vs British spelling on Wikipedia.
This post comprises good points.
This post consists of good points.
As a native speaker, I would say:
* Good points comprise this post.
* This post is comprised of good points.
I'm sure there's an interesting historical linguistics reason for the way things developed, but "comprised of" is well-established usage.
Additionally the verb to comprise isn't suitable here either, so it's going to sound awkward no matter how you try to rearrange the sentence. The "composed of" or "consists of" alternatives mentioned in the original page aren't really a good fit either.
There's no need to complicate things: this post contains many good points.
In truth if someone said or wrote any of these sentences, I wouldn't mind whatsoever. I know exactly what they meant and that's what matters. However since we're having a bit of fun, I figured I'd weigh in :)
I don't know how universal this is (I don't see anyone else making similar points yet..), but I use all three phrases because at least in my head they have subtle differences:
* "Comprised of" means the pieces make the whole, or at least the basis for the whole, and are an important part of it.
* "Composed of" drops the "important part of it" from "comprised of".
* "Consists of" is even broader, not only including "parts that make the whole" but also "a unit that can be broken into parts".
The differences aren't always relevant, but meaning is lost if they're treated as the same thing.
Edit: Found two further down on this page who each made one of my points, but not all three, so at least I'm not alone here.
The "is" shouldn't be there. I might be wrong tho, I'm not a native speaker.
There are items in the set that are good points.
All the items in the set are good points.
No, that doesn't work.
You could, however, say "Gaul is comprised of three parts".
https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/cw-comprise-comprised...
The verb ‘to comprise of’ can exist and have a different meaning that ‘to comprise’ or its passive ‘to be comprised by’ - and have a different passive (to be comprised of).
Like, the verbs ‘smell’ and ‘smell of’ do not mean the same thing, nor is one the passive of the other.
- I smell roses - roses are smelled by me - I smell of roses - roses are smelled of by me
Four very different meanings.
I'd be the last person to say you're wrong. Matters of grammar and usage ultimately boil down to does it feel right and current usage. As is usual with these things, other people have different feelings about it. That's what dialect is I think.
"The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers" means something different from "The teachers were unable to use the new computers"
"use" - the teacher was unable to operate the computer at all (maybe they couldn't use the mouse, for example).
> 2: Compose, constitute
> //… a misconception as to what comprises a literary generation. — William Styron
> //… about 8 percent of our military forces are comprised of women. — Jimmy Carter
See also 'Due to the fact' -> 'because'
Language changes. Words frequently develop the opposite meaning of what they originally had—opposites seem to be semantically closer and more prone to switching than completely unrelated words. When a word changes meaning, it is not wrong to use it in the new way, and at some point it even becomes wrong to use it in the original way: if you used "terrific" to mean "inspiring terror", you would confuse most of your audience!
In this particular case what I find funny is that the author acknowledges that this semantic shift has been going on for hundreds of years and all that was holding it back was the language purists. According to their own account, when the purists fell out of favor in the 60s it was like a dam burst.
The "incorrect" usage recently overtook the correct one in published books:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22comprised+o...
My favourite examples, because it also emphasizes some kind of ambiguity in the concept itself, are the english words "host", "hosting", "hospitality", "hostile", "hostage", with roots in the latin "hostis" (enemy), and the indo-european "ghosti" (guest, stranger).
Gardens also grow. But if you don't maintain your garden, they ahem literally become weeded, cough figuratively speaking.
Languages belong to their speakers, and the only way we have to vote at the moment is with our idiolect.
If you write a patent, statement of work, product specification, or contract with the wrong word out of ignorance, you only have yourself to blame
The sentiment that I disagree with is defending an incorrect or at least ambiguous word choice when there is a clear alternative. The strikes me as simple stubbornness.
The teachers lost that battle, like they'll lose all the similar battles to come, because they were trying to enforce communicating like old people.
It's the weird value judgements that people like the author assign to different usages that really bother me. Objectively, "is comprised of" is correct usage. It's the majority usage in books published today, and it's in all the dictionaries.
If TFA had left it at "it's ambiguous" I wouldn't blink, but they had to go off on a rant about how wrong the modern usage is, and that's a problem. It feels elitist and reactionary.
And I'm all for "language evolves" - but there's always going to be a time when you correct people. If you have a kid who calls the ambulance the "ambliance" (common one for kids where I'm from) you don't just shrug and say "language evolves", you try to teach them the correct way to speak, spell and write.
I don't know where the line is - what should be corrected and what should be absorbed in to English - but I feel like "comprised of" should be corrected.
When X comprises Y, then Y constitutes X.
Or to use passive: X is made up of Y, X is comprised of Y. Y are encompassed by X.
"Is comprised of" is a totally cromulent use and I would claim it is more logical and more easily understood than the "X comprises Y" usage.
That makes as much sense as saying that "ne... pas" in French is a double negative and therefore "simply wrong" to use as a straight negative.
No -- language isn't math, and English and other languages are chock-full of inconsistencies and seemingly "illogical" things. Language ultimately rests on convention, on real life usage -- not logic. Arguing that a common usage is illogical is fighting against the tide.
It's absurd that English speakers are so tolerant of incorrect usage. It's partly the pedagogic principle that "All shall have prizes" at the school sports day; but it's significant that if you try to correct incorrect usage, you get referred to literary figures such as poets and playwrights that used some term incorrectly, as if people like (e.g.) Pepys are authorities.
The reasons given were 1) British colonialism 2) Post WWII American hegemony 3) No one cares if you speak it poorly.
And this is maybe just a slightly more charitable rephrasing of #3 but very open to loan words and alternative ways of phrasing things.
Or, one can just as easily say it's absurd that certain pedants are so intolerant of evolving usage.
Language does not proceed by logical deduction. It is shared convention, no more and no less. If a majority of people think a new usage is right, then that's just what the usage is.
When you say "incorrect usage", incorrect according to whom? You? A minority? Why should anyone else take that seriously when they're already communicating just fine?
Isn't it common to drop the "ne" in colloquial speech?
The son in the family I stayed with on on a school trip back then found it hilarious how often I used "ne ... pas" instead of just "pas", e.g. "c'est pas grave" [1] rather than "ce n'est pas grave".
[1] Here's a song titled "c'est pas grave" by French group Columbine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yyjPxvNLGk
It's almost as if, contrary to what the person three comments up says, languages evolve over time...
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Please learn French before spouting off so confidently about it.
Thank you so much for this. I do it to. Same with "incentivize" -> "incent
stop the madness!
In order to examine natural languages using the scientific method, linguists gather data (i.e. native speakers' spoken or written communication) and then analyze this (i.e. find predictive models of this data). Gathering data, then claiming the data is wrong is epistemologically unfounded. Languages simply are the way they are. This would be like gathering data from Hubble and then deciding photons are wrong because their behavior mismatch with Newtonian laws.
What “bet”, “cap”, “rizz” and others used by the younger population isn’t wrong, it’s different and an evolution of certain terms.
I don’t study linguistics, but I can be sure there are terms we use today and take as normal-speak that were once the center of a younger generation’s slang vernacular.
An extreme example is the word retard. Years ago in normal speak you could say “After the EPA enacted stricter emissions regulations, this initially retarded the development of sports cars until new technology was implemented” other obvious examples are the medical angle of the word.
Today, you could use the word in such a way, it’s technically correct, however you’ll most likely get some odd looks.
Most uses of it today are either in specific comedic circles, or derogatorily towards another person/thing/animal etc
For instance, the word "biweekly" now means both "once every two weeks" and "twice per week". I don't mind usage of that word for those two meanings. Obviously, linguists can gather data and analyze how it's being used. They may conclude that one meaning was more favored 50 years ago and the other meaning is now.
But when I'm reading an encyclopedia, I'd prefer it to avoid this ambiguous word.
ADDED: I'm genuinely confused why people would disagree with this (which is in multiple style guides). I assume it's some variant of I know what it really means and, if someone else doesn't, that's their problem. But that seems antithetical to writing to communicate something to an audience.
Some time later, I came across the usage "X comprises Y and Z" and, based on my previous understanding that "comprise" == "compose," I took that to mean "X composes Y and Z" which, in other words, means "Y and Z are made up of X". But really, it means the other way around which is that "X is made up of Y and Z!" Only when I learned about the dual meaning of "comprise" did I correctly understand it to mean the latter.
To this day, I still have to actively juggle this arbitrary "dual-rule" in my head when I come across "comprise."
This is what an editor should do. What's the problem? Let them spend their time on it if they like, it seems like most times no one even notices the change.
It's not being pedantic if you are doing it to improve real life readability based on real feedback, even if it seems trivial.
Not necessarily true. There are authoritative guides on English (e.g. the Webster dictionary) that grammar is measured up against. In fact, the main reason we have standardized spelling instead of people just writing what seemed right is because people actively tried to enforce a right and wrong way of spelling.
This is exactly wrong. Webster's is not prescriptivist; a dictionary describes a language as it is, not as it "should" be (indeed, there is no such thing).
Some rate of language change has to be accepted, but it needn't be as fast as if we rejected all prescriptivism.
We each prescribe or refuse to prescribe language rules as we see fit, and thus the language evolves at some natural rate.
We do need some grammar/spelling pedantry.
This is nonsense. Do you really believe language is subject to intentional human control?
(Of course if a dictator comes and kills half a million people for things including changing language like it happened in my country, then it is, but this is a very rare exception.)
Some, yes. You speak roughly the same language(s) as your parents, friends, teachers, etc. Their influence on how you speak and write -especially when you were young- is quite large.
More importantly, taken to an extreme, descriptivism describes language in the way a map describes the territory. Any time a person speaks and is understood, no matter how badly, end-stage descriptivism has to allow their diction as syntactically and semantically valid in the language in which they spoke. The most you can say is that some expressions are rarer than others (you see "was done well" much more often than you see "was done good").
But this is also a wrong way of talking about language, just as much the old prescriptivist way was wrong. People are not static language replication machines, learning how to speak purely from imitation of their elders and community, and observed from on high by language anthropologists seeking to observe how they behave. They are concept-builders, rule-learners. They have a sense for not just how to speak in particular cases, but also what it is to speak well. It is this public sense of correct speech that is the subject of evolution over time, and is therefore also the proper target for descriptivist accounts of language.
Writing is similar to speech, but in writing most people are even more keyed to correctness, and less keyed to achieving the bare minimum of communication. Rules are stickier. We ought to understand this Wikipedia editor not as a noxious outsider to the evolution of language, who like the anthropologist inserts prescriptivist rules where they are unwanted, but as someone who is part of the normal evolution of language itself and therefore part of the terrain to be described! There have always been people who have been sticklers for particular rules.
Yes, as is not splitting infinitives. All nonsense. But "comprised of" is not nonsense. "Irregardless" is wrong". Etc. Not all prescriptions are nonsense.
seriously tho if descriptivists had the courage of their convictions they would just stop capitalizing, there's no reason to
Good usage improves clarity. This is why editors have style guides.
It may not be your personal preferred usage, but it certainly isn't bad usage if a major American dictionary approves.
For instance, I was once CC'd on an email thread at work where a senior leader made an obvious typo in reference to some Thing and everybody else on the thread blindly parroted it. This "alternate" usage was established and used systematically in the local context, but it led to a significant decline in general clarity and interpretability, and it was also not durable beyond the context of that thread. It was a mistake, simple as that.
"Comprised of" is probably past the threshold at this point, much like "rate of speed" and "how <thing> looks like" and so on and so forth. But—and I know this is shocking to some people—"correct" use of language does have significant advantages for communicating clearly, especially in writing. Prescriptivism and descriptivism both have their adherents because neither is right or wrong in the naive absolutist sense—balance is key.
Think about
“I walk to work.”
and
“I walk in order to work.”
Close, but not quite the same.
I think you mean "leverage".
Not all heroes wear capes. I also chafe at that misuse so I'm glad to read of your efforts.
In every other respect, "use" is indeed better.
I've never heard of that usage for utilize in my life. In a cursory search, I see that the definition of utilize is "to make use of", which to me sounds the same as "use".
I think I understood them, but I can never be sure, because in order to understand something with improper grammar, you usually need to "fill in the gaps" with the most reasonable assumptions possible, and those don't necessarily line up with your interlocutor's beliefs or intentions.
Putting words in other people's mouths is often required to "lubricate communication along", but it should be done as minimally as possible if the goal is for people to understand each other.
See Grice's cooperative principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
What's bullshit is people who think they know what other people think.
For example, "you're" and "your" are two very different words.
Let people obsess. They're not hurting you.
And in fact why would I have? I was replying to something someone else said in reply to you, not even related really except via parent to your GP comment.
So writing and speaking, while having a lot of linguistic overlap, are just different beasts.
(Ironically I think my grammar in this comment is not great, but FYI English is not my first language-- I'd appreciate a correction if appropriate)
I think I pronounce all three differently (Southern RP-ish (as in not farmer) BrE) but 'their' and 'they're' are close।
Rhotic AmE though clearly distinguishes those, and I can imagine them all sounding similar in that sort of accent।
The other thing is that writing on the open internet means that potentially many people will read the writing. Good grammar is borne out of routine, but this only works if the people practice the right thing - if they practice the wrong thing, then next time they'll potentially do the wrong thing by habit. So really, good grammar depends on reading texts with good grammar. It's also how we pick up vocabulary. Putting these things together, I think people owe it to each other, and the collective humanity, that they produce quality writings on public places.
I'll be using comprised of more frequently. I was already a satisfied user, but now I'll continue with glee.
Language changes and evolves to serve the purpose of communication. It doesn't care about rules or usage.
Maybe we need a defense mechanism against bike-shedding, no matter what color bikeshed one prefers?
Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.
With respect to this case, I'd have to see a given usage in context but I would probably generally leave it as is.
If I'm editing you I'll try to avoid making a lot of changes that boil down to stylistic choice but I will absolutely change things I (and my references) consider wrong.
ADDED: You can of course personally use language however you want. But others will judge you based on that.
I'd support this guy if he said "I hate 'comprised of' and so I am changing it where I can", but the idea that there's somehow a logical argument justifying it is silly. Appeal to authority is particularly silly in the context of linguistics.
If you like MLA style, do that. I personally love a little extra diaeresis and the oxford comma, but I wouldn't make them the law.
Oh, I would :-) But I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain contexts.
That said, there is a certain appeal to authority mindset if you're looking for mainstream non-fiction (and a lot of fiction as well) publication. Maybe "correct" isn't the right term but "accepted practice" or something along those lines which boils down to more or less the same thing.
A prescriptivist will say that a term is “correct,” a descriptivist will say a term is “commonly accepted.”
Personally, this is what I say to prescriptivists: if they want a language with legally defined rules - they should learn French.
Why AP style - written specifically for journalists - instead of all the other styles such as APA, Chicago, etc. etc.?
Otherwise, I/we use Chicago and Oxford comma.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-you-use-co...
There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
But changing quotations seems like a step too far. I think his practice of changing a quotation to a paraphrasing (where it doesn't really matter if the article includes a quotation or not) is fine (if a little obsessive). But actually changing quotations feels wrong to me.
I do agree with his assessment that including people's grammatical/spelling mistakes in a quotation detracts from what the person said, but I don't think the correct move is to change the quotation to something the person didn't actually say. At most, the "offending" part of the quotation should be removed and replaced with correct usage inside square brackets to indicate the changed/added part was not part of the original quotation. But overall I think he should just leave these instances alone.
> There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
I think you are in a way proving the editor's point, though? Purposefully chosen or not (I did chuckle a little), that sentence is garbage, and if I were to read that in something without knowing or realizing it was a joke, I would take your words less seriously. I would think, if you can't even use language properly, and need to "inflate" your words, maybe your ideas are overinflated too.
On a different note, I don't think we should care about people's "autonomy" when we're talking about a resource like Wikipedia. "Letting people write whatever and however they want" is not a positive trait in an encyclopedia.
“[sic]”, which is always lowercase, indicates something the current author views as (probably) erroneous or otherwise improper that is left unchanged in the quoted text, to emphasize that the author isn’t endorsing the usage/construction so marked. It doesn’t mark a change.
But, yeah, the basic point is to not change a quote unless it's some trivial mistake. (But you can flag it so that it doesn't look like you're the one who may have screwed up.)
Note that I'm not saying we should write poorly, or deliberately sloppily, just it's at the author or editor's preference.
The English/American are culturally less prescriptive around grammar, but other languages (such as French) are often much more prescriptive with it.
Also consider the "why": does this phrase pop up more and more often due to misunderstandings and copy/paste? Or is it because people actually want to change the meaning of the phrase and are doing it consciously? I don't see any evidence of the latter.
Language is important. It's the foundation of communication. I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
Put another way: sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
This is not true at all. Merriam-Webster includes it as its second definition of three [1]. It is not presented as an "alternate" or as confusing or incorrect in any way. To the contrary, there is a usage note at the end emphasizing its validity -- how it is "now somewhat more common in general use".
> I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
But there is nothing ambiguous whatsoever about "is comprised of". Its meaning is crystal clear.
> But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way
It's not, because they're not "pushing" anything. People are just communicating in the same constructions they've unconsciously absorbed, like they do with most of language. The only people "pushing" are people like this Wikipedia editor, who is trying to impose an exclusionary viewpoint that, for example, the editors of Merriam Webster disagree with.
Are you sure? There appear to have been 90k instances of usage in widely read reference material (e.g. Wikipedia, bar this crusade). I'd say that qualifies.
> I don't see any evidence of the latter.
I'm pretty sure people use it based on the meaning they intend it to have, see prior statement for substantial evidence :P
> sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
I don't think anyone but the Wiki editor is pushing anything. I'm saying use language as you like, just don't try to justify your personal crusade based on "correctness", be it moral or technical. I don't care for that style of usage of "comprised of" either, particularly, but I wouldn't try to tell other people how to write, and I think the meaning and purpose of the phrase is perfectly clear.
It's not.
> If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended.
The reader can say "It was unclear", "I didn't like it", or "that seems like it's opposite to what I would expect", but "wrong" is a silly thing to say. None of these things are even absolute within published English literature, let alone just say American, or UK, English literature. Even if you're following a particular style manual things are ambiguous in many cases.
I actually kind of admire these folks that do stuff like this. These sorts of obsessions are interesting artifacts of the internet’s cultural landscape.
Wikipedia is nothing but a superminority making the website their playground, though[0]. If you get rid of the superminority, the website literally couldn't function. The inner workings of Wikipedia are actually a fascinating rabbit hole to fall into, but the takeaway is that this behaviour seems to be ingrained into human nature. Basically, the majority consume, a minority produces, and a minority of the minority produces a lot. You can see this in any participatory system as well, not just Wikipedia.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_...
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
The main point of contention is that some of Mead's subjects, 40 years and a conversion to Christianity later, denied having had casual sex as young women and claimed that they were playing a practical joke on her.
Whether they were telling the truth then and if so to what extent they're representative of Mead's other subjects is a thorny issue, to say the least.
They produce a whole lot of edits. They don't actually contribute an especially large amount of content, which is the thing with real value.
The content is mostly written by subject matter experts that contribute large blocks of useful text to just a few articles each.
That sounds like the ideal scenario. Any evidence that it is or isn’t this way? I would guess it’s skewed more towards a handful of folks simply writing many articles about things they’re moderately knowledgeable about.
The vast majority of content was created by a long tail of users, with a very small minority of users being the last to "touch" a particular piece of text (copy edits, moving things around, etc).
Probably should have published that.
As with most human efforts, the emergence of a political layer is inevitable. But overall they seem to be doing a pretty good job keeping their shit together. Even though I have no way of knowing whether the information on Wikipedia is correct as a whole, at least it presents as self-consistent.
I'm not too sure about that, actually. Wikipedia has a lot of special interest groups to handle niche topics, so I don't think that there's much room for experts outside of the group.
Reality is that their rules are only for you. They dont judge their own edits with same standards. If edits were anonymized tons od admins would get banned.
We're talking about totally different minorities here.
Yes, a tiny proportion of Wikipedia users create a vast portion of the content. But that doesn't mean their views are minority views.
If those, say, 1% of users who are contributors, still map roughly to the same distribution of gender, race, nationality, political leanings, etc. as the group of all users, then there's no superminority issue. If they set policy according to their own discussion and voting, we wouldn't expect that to be substantially different from a larger group.
The problem is with superminority views -- if you asked 100 randomly selected users of Wikipedia whether all instances of "is comprised of" should be replaced with "comprises", probably only a tiny minority would agree. This is a superminority viewpoint, which is the whole reason why this story is generating so much discussion.
A superminority viewpoint imposing its beliefs is a problem. While a small group of editors that is merely numerically a "superminority" is in no way a problem, unless they turn out to be substantially unrepresentative of the larger population in their views.
It's more like the minority of the minority does a lot of spellchecking and editing, but it seems, much more plausibly, that a group much larger than a minority does the bulk of writing.
Any discussion of Wikipidia on HN is incomplete without a reference to Aaron Swartz's analysis of how Wikipedia is written:
"[He] concluded that the bulk of its content came from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders," each of whom made few other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tended to correct spelling and other formatting errors.He said: "The formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around." [1]
I don’t think there can be a system to balance this without harming the wider system simply because these people make up the bulk of the work being done, and enforcement systems usually cause much of the same sort of power centralization, but often worse.
Of course not all of the work by these powerusers is useful but I can’t imagine a system that only blocks the bad work without harming the highly productive ‘good’ people who are trying to be more representative of the public. Plus stereotypically making the rules/processes is the easy part, because people are motivated at the start to fix things, but after it’s in place the actual hard work of enforcing it and doing it right is often neglected… or these same small groups of “powerusers” will also end up running the moderation and use it to explicitly control things even more.
Although those risks/issues has rarely stopped people from trying in the past.
Of course it's not perfectly unbiased, and anal super-pedants do make it intolerable to try to contribute. That said, they do at least make an effort to stick to the facts.
I'm not sure about "much more than any other media outlet" but for mainstream non-controversial topics it's probably pretty accurate. It may not be comprehensible for anyone who isn't already an expert, it's maybe pretty thin if the person/subject isn't part of the modern tech and hobbyist zeitgeist, but it's probably not a bad starting point especially if it has a lot of good cites.
Articles are often heavily censored or simply biased.
Maybe the whole internet is?
But I find myself relying on Wikipedia less and less. I think chat searches are probably the final nail in the coffin for me directly access it.
2. Encourage the author to do something that effects more positive sentiment with their time, even if it’s “wrong.” It could be this behavior is compulsive and author has problems controlling it. At least try to steer that energy, and just do not engage in fighting it.
There is one editor, BrownHairedGirl, who tags articles with “bare links” (note she does not actually change those links very often), and gets into battles about categories that has driven off dozens of users (if not more). They are the most toxic editor on Wikipedia but have amassed a group of followers who are of the same ilk - people who do nothing but poke at minor parts of Wikipedia but contribute nothing of significance - and will remove anyone who gets on their bad side.
Wikipedia is said to have hit “maintenance phase”. That’s ridiculous, there is a lot more to be writing about. Basically these people are killing the project. It’s a complete tragedy.
Edit: here’s an example of the vicious and petty actions they make - they created a category “Abusive, mean, petty Wikipedians” for people who use a particular category that is never filled in on their user pages. This has been there since 2017. We have one user who calls themselves the “category police” who is currently arguing such a divisive and abusive labeling of editors is quite acceptable. The irony is strong in that one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abusive,_mean,_petty_...
...yet I'm seeing unironic comparisons to both 1984 and Nazi Germany, so ... what this person did is evil?
Can someone please help me understand this?
It's not so different from if a Brit tried to change every instance of "color" to "colour", or an American changed every instance of "colour" to "color". It would be incredibly annoying, patronizing, and disrespectful.
Wikipedia is not a place for people to wage their private grammatical language wars, and so people are responding in a negative way because the editor is trying to impose their viewpoint by sheer force rather than respecting contributors who choose to use Merriam-Webster's 2nd definition of the word.
Even though this person is a lone wolf, their actions feel disturbingly authoritarian. This level of compulsion and control is immensely off-putting to the average person. Anyone who puts this much effort into controlling information seems like someone worth confronting.
The editor here is arguably correct in that the usage he's changing is incorrect.
You may find it pedantic (and I might agree), but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Does tilting at this particular windmill make Wikipedia worse? I would say it makes it better, even if in a very small way.
Even if you don't care about the incorrect usage, I find his argument that some uses are there just to make the prose sound more "intelligent" -- at the expense of clarity and ease of reading -- to be valid enough. I would much rather read "The residents are former New Yorkers" instead of "The population is comprised of former New Yorkers". The latter is unnecessarily complex for a sentence like that.
I'm sure someone can find a completely separate example of this sort of editing that actually is harmful. But the solution to that isn't "ban all edits of this sort".
Maybe the pathology is this kind of conservativism. I find lack of change - due to knee-jerk resistance and corrupt vested interest - causes far more problems than anything.
There is so much we could do - easy low-hanging fruit - where the only obstacle is (this kind of) conservativism.
The battle here pedant vs “comprised of”. What’s the cultural importance?
Language drifts. The rate of that drift is of no particular importance and that seems to be all that’s at stake here.
Being a grammar nazi is one thing, but editing quotes to match a language that stopped evolving in the 1970s definitely oversteps the bound between quirky and actively harmful.
I'd even argue, in the vein of a sibling comment, that willing to label the activist superminorities that run things as mentally ill is very important. They're usually obsessive/perfectionist and workaholics, yet we're supposed to commend them and follow in their lead.
I am happy there are people willing to do the work for free and that Wikipedia is now better. Hopefully he corrects more errors in the future so I am less likely to pick up incorrect language in the future when I read the articles. Sounds like the right solution you are looking for to me.
The refrain of the left "what's the big deal, why do you care" is exactly the sort of lazy dismissal that makes people end up resting on their laurels and believing that "one small change" doesn't matter.
We need to get better at pushing back at the first small sign of nonsense, and not let things get really bad before people start to care. Ironically, this wikipedia edit is pretty much the most benign current example of a minority controlling a narrative because nobody cares enough to push back. See all the insane modern language policing.
There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all founded under the umbrella of a quasi-propaganda organization that officially was just a society/club. [1]
They created their own "purified" dictionary with a "clean language" that was trying to find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationalistic awareness with all its perks.
It was so ridiculous and opinionated that they tried to even enforce the use of "Nagelindiewandschlageisen" instead of using the Swedish word hammer.
They burned all their stuff in the war, but it's somewhat folklore that they were heavily involved with Goebbels and his propaganda in WW2.
They got away with that during the Nuremberg trials so technically this is an accusation from my side.
Culturally I think this is the opposite of what cultures should embrace. Languages will always evolve, and you cannot prevent that.
As a side-note: Those were so puristic people that they even pissed off Adolf Hitler at some point, because they criticised him for using foreign words in his speeches.
[1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allgemeiner_Deutscher_Sprach...
As a counter example, High Arabic has been meticulously preserved, and Arab speakers take pride in that fact, regardless of the many spoken dialects that exist.
I wonder if this was maybe Orwell inspiration?
But I agree with the similarities of the Ministry of Truth, and what it wanted to achieve. The issues as I mentioned is that I don't think there's a universal truth to anything; and therefore eradicating wordings or forms of language that are "not good" is a very subjective perspective.
I do not understand - OP was mentioning that the organization worked through second world war and was event at Nurimberg trials. An Orwell written 1984 in 1949. What do you mean that this organization predates Orwell ?
I was just insinuating that Orwell might have known about this history (and probably about similar like this) and use this as inspiration for how dictatorships can use purification of lanuguage for their purposes (in case of Orwell it was more about controling "thought crimes" then abount simple national identification).
Turkish word: Tren (Train)
Supposedly proposed translation: Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç
Which can be translated to English somewhat literally as "Bottom pushed, top smoking, multi-person-saddle, bringer and deliverer of people" (My best attempt, perhaps GPTs can do better).
However, the thing about them coming up with fake Turkish roots to foreign words (especially French) is totally true. One such example is "okul" (school) which comes from "l'école" but they long time argued that it came from the Turkish root "oku" which also means to study (among "read" and "send prayers"). There are thousands of "inventions" like these.
The weird trend was (still is!) our tendency as a nation to invent Turkish language roots in words from other languages, which once lead to ridiculous stuff like the Sun Language Theory [0].
IM(not so)HO: All language institutes should be left in the past, as they tend to ignore the organic properties of the languages they are supposed to protect.
I doubt it's been trained on that, here is what it told me:
> I'm sorry, but the phrase "Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç" appears to be a nonsensical combination of Turkish words. It doesn't have a clear meaning or context.
> try a literal translation for "Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç"
>> ChatGPT: Sure, here's a literal translation of the original Turkish sentence: "Bring-take with a lot of lower-upper pushing-pulling, with many buttocked and seated ones."
>> As you can see, the literal translation doesn't make much sense in English, and it loses the humor and rhythm of the original tongue twister.
> try a better translation
>> Certainly, here's a better translation of the original Turkish sentence that preserves the humor and rhythm:
>> "Jostle and wiggle with seats too small or too big, to make it through this ride like a true champion of the middle."
>> This translation captures the playful tone and the challenge of the original tongue twister, while using language that is more natural and understandable in English.
Oh well :)
You can search for "Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein" or "Atlas der deutschen Sprache" or similar, you'll find references to it but not the scanned books.
Welcome to the age of Digital Amnesia :'( [2]
Maybe the dossier about the burned books of WW2 is a good start to find things about it, but it's kinda hopeless without a search index. Alternatively there seems to be a lend-able copy in the library of Dresden [3] and [4]
[1] https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs
[3] https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/verbra...
> They created their own "purified" dictionary ...
So, the "Erhaltung" effort was not to preserve existing usage, but to create a new vocabulary aligned with the group's ethno-nationalist agenda. Seems very different from TFA's agenda.
These changes don’t make your day worse. He’s not shoving it in our faces or claiming it’s going to save the world. We don’t know what’s going on in this editor’s life or what he “should” be doing with his time instead. Maybe simple routine work is his way of unwinding from the maddening pace and complexity of the rest of life. Good on him for feeling passionate about something and seeing it through.
We should be grateful there are people willing to do this kind of mundane janitorial work.
No, this is in its essence very petty vandalism, an attempt to force his notion of grammar on the entirely of Wikipedia despite knowing this is forbidden. That this forcing is the intended goal is clear from their own description of the editing process, where they admit to never permanently recording articles with authors who do object to the edits. Instead they just record objectors for six months and then try sniping in the edit again in the hope that the author is not there to protect it anymore.
In my opinion, this isn't what built Wikipedia, this is what made Wikipedia hostile to new contributors.
"Comprise" and "compose" are two different words with different meanings, and people often use the former when they ought to use the latter.
But he is?
When someone goes around "correcting" everyone's language and writes a manifesto about it, that sure is shoving to me. It's not working towards a consensus by trying to convince, it's unilaterally imposing, and creating work for others to undo if they disagree. If that's not shoving, I don't know what is.
Absolutely not. It's built out of people writing useful and information articles, not pedantic editing over personal language bugbears.
> These changes don’t make your day worse.
It shows up in people's watchlists and potentially dozens or hundreds of people will need to verify this change; it introduces edit conflicts, it invalidates drafts people were still working on. It absolutely adds work for other editors, and that's fine even for smaller changes (I have many small changes myself) if it actually improves the article, but all of this amounts to little more than "I don't like it".
"Composed of" and "consists of" are better alternatives.
is incorrect. It should read:
Composed of" and "consists of" were better alternatives.
This thread is literally a clout ATM machine for a group comprised of pedants.
This is called a Janus word because it can be it's own antonym. There are other Janus words, like "table" as in "to table a topic for discussion", which means opposite things in American vs British English. The author touches on the fact that that's a regional distinction, but there is no such regional distinction for comprise. Therefore it makes sense for a website like Wikipedia to pick a single form, and the original is still more widespread than the new.
I'm not so sure. Google ngrams has the new usage recently taking over in published books[0], and those usually learn conservative in their usage.
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22comprised+o... (this works because ~no one uses comprise in the passive voice in the old meaning)
The best way to deal with this issue is to have body that slows down language changes, then normalise them based on logic and history, something like the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy.
The author means “composed of” and “consists of” are better phrases to use in general (i.e. according to style guides), not were better phrases exclusively for use on his Wikipedia project. We know this for sure because in the “Quotations” section the author says that he changes “comprised of” to “composed of” or “comprises” in quotations under certain circumstances. He is not wary of using “comprises”.
The author also indicates that this work is still ongoing and meant to be evergreen.
For this reason, I thought his “ATM clout” statement meant the opposite of what he meant.
You can submit your thoughts here!
Yes this is true for natural language, but we don't want Wikipedia to have natural language. We want Wikipedia to have clear and concise language.
French for example, is different. They have council with official authority over the language.
That's most high-level Wikipedia editors in a nutshell.
If you want to change the meaning of a word, that’s fine, and maybe in a few decades you will succeed, but until you get enough people on board you will only cause confusion.
What you're defending is a bit like replacing all female TV hosts by men and then saying that nobody surely is against men on TV.
I am fascinated by a single person taking up the cause of “correcting” the language of others based off of their personal linguistic aesthetic preference.
I don’t see many people saying “I often have to stop at the words ‘comprised of’ and reevaluate the meaning of the sentence that I’m reading lest I completely misunderstand it.” This isn’t actually in practical service of clarity, it’s an exercise in preserving a sense of meaningful posterity — a deeply personal and sentimental endeavor despite what “reasons” one is able to elucidate.
This sentence contains a load-bearing “best”. The Wikipedia editor’s contention is that they have established the canonical “best”, and it is that contention that is being scrutinized.
This is correct. It is exactly the same amount of subjective as the word “best” normally holds. Since there has never been a reproducible measure of best-ness in any objective sense of anything linguistic, it’s squarely in the territory of subjectivity.
If by “best” you mean “understandable to virtually all readers” then “comprised of” and “composed of” are equally “best”
If best-ness is measured by something other than usefulness, then the person that decides the new set of weights with which to weigh best-ness is performing a personal and subjective act. “Orthodoxy to a standard of English as cited by me in context of the year x” does not automatically qualify something for extra best-ness points.
I will gladly entertain the issue of “comprised of” somehow lacking in accuracy with a person that is genuinely confused by its inclusion in a sentence.
(On a personal note, as a non-native speaker of English I've always found the phrase "comprised of" confusing. I infer the "directionality" based on context but am unsure how to use it correctly myself.)
Can't see why anyone would be annoyed.
A critical mass of people have adopted the term serverless. Therefore, the term means whatever they want it to mean, right? No sense in swimming against the tide here, correct?
Yes, words mean what people want them to mean if we're willing to shrug our shoulders and accept the new usage or terminology. That doesn't mean it's never correct to fight against sloppy or non-standard usage in the hopes that it won't be considered standard.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35811741&p=2#35812073
I understand languages change, which I think is an argument for the edits. If the language pivoted one way, pivoting back is just as valid a change as any other. "Comprised of" and similar phrasing doesn't come out of the ether. They build in popularity as they propagate through writing. There's a big snowball effect. I suspect going forward, you'll see "comprises" or "consists of" because people just copy what they see. Most don't have a strongly formed opinion about which phrase is better.
Personally, I view writing as a craft or skill like any other. Writing is different than speech and always has been. There's a huge qualitative difference in text that has been edited and text that is streamed out of someone's head. The former is almost always clearer to understand. Consequently, if someone points out a grammatical issue to me I say "Oh, TIL, thanks for letting me know" and then I adapt and go on with my life. My bias is to the established norm, not arguing that I'm riding the wave of a linguistic revolution. If I have an open question on something, I'll consult an established resource, just like I would in any other field or craft.
I think the problem is people get embarrassed when they're told they're using the language incorrectly. I get it. I've been there. It's true that English does not have a governing body like French, but I don't see that as a compelling justification for redefining terms or just arguing that nothing can ever be wrong.
Another question: are there places where accuracy and precision are more important than others? Would an encyclopedia be one of those places? I'll reveal my cards here: I believe so.
Somewhat humorously I think a good chunk of the disagreements here come from people treating those concepts interchangeably. Attempts to apply mathematical reasoning to language and interpretation are doomed to fall into similar traps.
> Wikipedia does not have a policy or guideline on whether "comprised of" is welcome in the encyclopedia.
This is nothing less but one person trying to punch way above their weight in shaping the English language.
If Wikipedia chooses not to adopt a style guideline on matters like this, his little quest to robo-edit this phrase is unrepresentative of Wikipedians.
That’s a total noob move for pedants.
A more at weight pedant would work on changing the style guide.
This is the equivalent of a self appointed hall monitor yelling “no skipping in the school hallway” when there’s no rule against skipping. The fact that some people don’t like skipping and that skipping is dangerous is not relevant, the place for that discussion is for the rules nerds in authority to change the rules to disallow skipping.
What worries me about this approach of one person is that they can say “I yelled at people 90k times to stop skipping therefore it’s important and we should change the rule based on all this anti-skipping activity.”
Language pedantry is deprecated in Wikipedia. WP is resolutely descriptivist.
I regret that; I'm fully on-board with the notion that language changes. But I'm not OK with the idea that there are no rules at all. Humpty Dumpty was wrong; English is not a language where any string of words could have any meaning.
This is especially important in an encylopaedia.
Eg the French have one, but that doesn't mean they have any moral authority.
So when I was sent on a course to do with computers in Paris, I said that my French was up to it. Wrong! My presence on the course was seriously disruptive, because French technical jargon (which I didn't learn at age 6) is unrecognisable to people who haven't learned that jargon in France (nobody else uses it).
For instance, Chinese/Eastern medical jargon is objectively more readable than Western terms (unless you are fluent in Greek and Latin), but that doesn't mean you'll be able to understand them without some prior exposure.
French is also spoken outside of France.
I assumed doctors everywhere had built an informal consensus to use English, with terminology derived from classical greek; rather as pilots and air-traffic controllers all use English.
At least that used to be the case. In Germany medical students are still required to learn (at least some) Latin.
- Seats can only be replaced at death, which explains the advanced age. I generally think old people have more experience than younger ones, but opinions vary, and youngism and modernism are a thing.
- The first woman in the Académie, in 1980, was Marguerite Yourcenar, and she probably was the most non-feminist woman they could choose.
- Recently they opposed the “français.e.s” style of writing, sticking to the classic “français(e)s” or “ladies and gentlemen” inclusive writing. It made an uproar because the first one is described as the only inclusive one by feminist organizations, who like to forget that we included women before they were born. So we reached a fun state where the government uses the feminist one, the Académie says it’s not French, all organizations that want to please women align with the government, but I assure you I never receive management-oriented document in feminist writing, I rarely receive resumes or cover letters in feminist style, nor would I accept them if I got them (political militantism doesn’t make a good employee, especially if they pretend including women is a new thing).
Any other fun story about the moral upstanding of the Académie Française would be interesting too.
I like the idea about Académie, at least it defines a way to write new words. Some are picked up by people, and others are ignored, but that's ok too.
> [..] nor would I accept them if I got them (political militantism doesn’t make a good employee, especially if they pretend including women is a new thing).
I don't know what to make of this, you'd reject candidates because they used dots instead of parenthesis, citing political militantism?
Written language should be pronounceable - it's a written rendition of a spoken language. Even math formulae are pronounceable. How are you supposed to pronounce “français.e.s”?
Firstly, mapping symbols to sound is arbitrary and based on convention.
I don't speak French, but I wouldn't say français.e.s is that much worse than français(e)s, pronunciation-wise. But I do agree that -.e.s is a bit odd. Kinda like w/ and w/o in English. I mean, seriously, why isn't it w. and w.o. like any other abbreviation.
- fuck -> fuck
- duck -> fuck
Note: I do like ducks but they’re generally less common than fucks.
() If we can’t say that “comprised of” is objectively wrong, then what _can_ we say about English? Should we accept “bought” as a legitimate past tense of “bring”? Sometimes people are just making a habitual mistake. It happens to me, too.
> Sure, but why should people who can’t use the language properly (*) be an uncontested force in that evolution?
How do you think English and all other modern languages formed? If some authority were able to stop people who can't use a language properly from evolving it, the people on the British isles would be speaking Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, etc. today, not English.
Should we accept "break" to mean deceleration, or as a noun for the equipment to slow down a vehicle, then?
Several words in English have multiple separate meanings.
> people say "break" when they mean "brake".
You were still able to understand what they meant.
Rather, instead of "should we accept", I'd ask "can people be expected to understand".
I'd think a divergence in language is more severe if it disrupts communication.
When some say "I laughed so loud I literally rolled on the floor", they do not, in any way, mean "I laughed so loud I figuratively rolled on the floor". Instead they mean "I laughed so loud, that it was almost like I was literally rolling on the floor". It is merely used as a generic augmentative: the phrase has the same basic meaning with or without "literally", but it gains more emphasis with it. The fact that it happens to apply to a figurative usage of "rolling on the floor" is mostly a coincidence.
Its just like "very" (which is a contraction of "verily", truly) has been adopted as an augmentative and lost its original meaning of "truly".
It's a distinctive feature of English that spelling and pronunciation are only loosely related. It's because of the history of the language; and of the country, for that matter.
The evolution of writing is separate from the evolution of language in general. Read and read are still different words even if they are written the same. If the spelling "brake" for declaration fell out of favor and "break" was used for both words, this wouldn't change anything about the English language. The two are already homophones, and they would be far from the only homographs in English.
Thing is, it's going to happen either way. The actual choices are being "the old man yelling at clouds" vs moving on.
I haven't read John McWhorter's "Words on the Move", but he addresses this question there, and this review has a summary:
https://byfaithweunderstand.com/2017/06/15/review-john-mcwho...
- Isolated cases of 'incorrect' usage can be considered 'incorrect'.
- Widespread usage that's different would be better described as a shift in language.
That said, I think McWhorter's observation that much fulminating over language usage is sublimated classism is an astute one.
It's fine in general, but it can't really apply here. This is some people imagining a difference that doesn't exist and then enforcing it on other people whose identities are unknown. Social class has no role to play in the process, except that this is the same behavior that, in other contexts, hardens class boundaries.
In other words, my analysis would be that people are motivated to engage in this behavior without knowing why, and the ultimate reason is to enforce class boundaries, but here they're just going with their instincts even though there isn't a class boundary to enforce.
For the same reason people with different opinions should still be allowed to vote. Also it's not an uncontested force, you are free to vote for the "correct" use of the language by actively using it yourself in that way and trying to convince others. Just like everyone else.
In 200 years people might learn "should of" in school, just like we today call that one symbol "ampersand". And they will find some new word to complain about, just like probably every generation since at least middle english did because it was all the "correct" version of the language to them.
Well, a lot of things. You can't say "the baby seems drinking the milk." Even though it's perfectly comprehensible, every English speaker will agree that "the baby seems to be drinking the milk" is the correct way to express this. Avoiding "comprised of" is a "rule" where we can't identify any dialect where everyone agrees on it.
Most relevant example I can think of is when Mac OS X was renamed and stylized to "macOS" someone went and systematically did a find and replace all instances of "OS X" to macOS even in situations where it made absolutely no sense as the article was explicitly talking about prior versions. It was like rewriting history in real time.
Imagine if someone went into a library and started editing history books with a Sharpie to reflect future events.
I’m this example, there very little perhaps no harm of not changing because it’s just a corporate brand and the corporation cares and if they cared, they would edit.
The harm of incorrectly changing means information is wrong and makes understanding wrong and readers either have the wrong knowledge or spend time researching and correcting something they normally wouldn’t.
I don’t think the goal is absolute accuracy of cosmetic branding, I think the goal is accurately capturing humanity’s information to improve human understanding and knowledge.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/04/trump-hurrican...
>Altering official government weather forecasts is against the law.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2074
>18 U.S. Code § 2074 - False weather reports
>Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.
>(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 795; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(G), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
Never heard of such, I understand why they get upset if someone sprinkle the sentences with ads.
Get back to me when you can type the traditional ct ligature. ;D
Moralising about caring about style is itself prescriptivism.
In patent claims, "comprising" and "consisting of" are different:
6,151,604 claim 1 is:
1. A data storage and retrieval system for a computer memory, comprising:
means for configuring said memory according to a logical table, said logical table including: ...
6,151,605 claim 1 is:
1. A method for allowing a software application to access a configuration file, said configuration file comprising data used by said software application, comprising the steps of:
providing a configuration processing library, said configuration processing library comprising ...
===================
You almost never use "consisting of" in writing claims.
https://patentfile.org/patent-writing-tip-comprises-vs-consi...
A claim for an invention "comprising" A, B, and C also generally claims inventions that include other elements. Such claims are usually within the statuary categories of processes, machines, or articles of manufacture.
A claim for an invention "consisting of" A, B, and C, however, does not generally claim inventions that include other elements. Such claims are usually usually within the statutory category of "compositions of matter" which includes such things as useful drug or chemical mixtures.
Here's a link to the relevant U.S. Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) section:
https://mpep.uspto.gov/RDMS/MPEP/e8r9#/current/d0e200824.htm...
I did notice she singled out "comprising of" for abuse, which it definitely deserves. In a claim you write "comprising" or "comprised of."
E.g. simply: A proton contains three quarks. But if you want to use passive voice, there is no good other option. A proton is made of three quarks? Sounds too colloquial. ...is put together from...? No. I think "A proton is comprised of three quarks" is the cleanest way of saying what I want to say.
And yes, this was an actual example from my work and I discussed it through because I feel strongly about it :-)
Whereas "comprises" feels halfway archaic when I read it, like it's the way an elderly British academic might speak, or something only used in legalese. Somebody using "comprises" in writing strikes me as a little odd, a little bit pretentious.
I'm not saying whether any of this is right/wrong, it's just the connotations I've absorbed.
Some people are complaining about overly zealous editors who delete a lot of and as an Inclusionist [1] I understand the sentiment. I think deleting information from Wikipedia is pretty bad. But being pedantic about English is not deleting information, it's improving the transmission of information.
Sure, you can add an elipsis if you want trim a quote, but altering words in a quote is equivalent to lying, even if a mild form of lying.
If you add "sic" you try to make the speaker sound like an idiot and that you have the right way.
Plus, "sic" pushes the attention of the reader toward this specific word, when it may be a waste of time of the reader.
The personal phobia for certain words (of the writer) shouldn't impact the reader.
I'm quite happy to see the (sic) in quotes. Without, I'd read the quote and stumble over the incorrect would and would think "wait, did they really say that or has it been transcribed wrongly?". With the (sic), I'm that matter doesn't even arise. I understand it is the exact phrasing of the author and go on. Also, I know whom to attribute this to. Did I read the exact transcription of an hazily author, or a hazy transcription of an exact author?
So, the modern definition of factoid is, itself, a factoid.
Making this, er, fact well known will be useful to future historians, who, when they encounter the word in early 2nd millennium texts, are going to have to puzzle over whether or not the factoid mentioned is actually meant to be true, or false.
Edit, btw, the suffix "oid" means "resembling", so, a factoid is something resembling a fact. Therefore, factoid contains its own definition; and we still butchered it.
> We can thank Norman Mailer for factoid: he used the word in his 1973 book Marilyn (about Marilyn Monroe), and he is believed to be the coiner of the word.
But who cares? A word totally invented just five short decades ago quickly morphed, as MW continues:
> The word has since evolved so that now it most often refers to things that decidedly are facts, just not ones that are significant.
Why should Norman Mailer's made-up definition get precedence over the people who actually use it? Just because you coin something doesn't mean you own it. I don't think future historians are going to be confused. Never in my life have I encountered the word "factoid" used in Mailer's sense, until reading your comment. The new definition has long since taken over, long live fun little facts — long live factoids!
The family of the word “act” has similar divergence from similar Latin word actus
https://web.archive.org/web/20150214014338/http://chronicle....
Now that I know, "comprised of" fits in this category, it's definitely going to be a part of the everyday lexicon.
Wikipedia moderation/editor gang continues to set new records for anal-retentiveness and obfuscated motivations but as long as I can keep slurping up enwiki-pages-articles dumps, I'll leave them alone and wish them well.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Single-purpose_accou...
People will use words however however they will, and that's their absolute right. And without pretending that the aforementioned unique quality should (or even could) justify enforcing one meaning over the other in the English language at large, I think that it's fine to have different standards for different contexts, and that Wikipedia is a context whose need for precision and clarity justifies some pedantry.
If this guy's willing to put in the legwork, more power to him.
The term "comprises" and/or "comprised of" has a specific usage in patents. Comprising means that at least all of the listed elements must exist, but other elements that are not mentioned in the claim may also be present. This in turn allows for dependent claims.
The alternative term is "consists" and/or "consists of", which means that only the listed elements may be present. It is used almost exclusively when claiming chemical or molecular formulas.
Unless they're a dear friend, and they knew what they meant to say better than you. A person is expressing their feeling/opinion/interpretation in their vernacular. Yes, it is probably stream of consciousness, but that is exactly what it is, and just changing one word or phrase doesn't help make it clear.
I suppose wikipedia is edumacational so I guess I understand, but unless he's really reading all of the surrounding context of 90k pages (unlikely) then he certainly risks making embarrassing errors.
On the other hand... there's value in the stance that words mean things and lazy usage that leads to "well, people use it this way now so we're going to update the dictionary" is frustrating and not for the good.
I like it when people use comprise correctly. "The book series comprises 20 novels and 5 novellas" or "the Tarot deck comprises 78 cards." I don't think it's a big win that lazy usage has led the various dictionaries to just throw up their hands and accept the other usage.
But I also understand that after seeing comprise used the other way all the time, it seems silly to argue against it after a point. It's a form of disagree and commit, I suppose - you have to know when you've lost the argument and sticking with a specific usage has no virtue.
The hill I'll die on is "then" and "than," though. In the past 5 or 10 years I've noticed a creeping trend of people writing "more then" rather than "more than." "Then" should be used for time, "than" is used to compare things. "More then" makes no sense as a comparison. But, at some point, it started becoming a more and more common error and now I think people honestly think it's correct because they've seen it online so much. Probably driven by autocomplete.
I could totally understand going on a Wikipedia rampage and replacing every instance of "more then" that exists.
As a side note, I find it hilarious that discussing proper English usage with technical folks - who are often deeply passionate about the correct way to do this or that in their area of expertise - are usually like "oh, that's not important. Grammar and spelling are stupid. I can't be bothered to learn that." But God help you if say "container" when you mean "container image" or something like that, because you'll get a lecture on how absolutely nothing you've written past that can be taken seriously because you got a tiny technical nuance wrong.
Just like those people who always have to rename a variable or reorder some conditional expression when reviewing a pull request.
If there is no strong argument for the change, just leave it as the author intended it.
Every time we avoid saying "comprised of," the pedants win.
I guess, we could say, much ado about nothing.
[1]: Siegal, Allan (1999). The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Three Rivers Press. p. 80.
[2]: Google search query for site:nytimes.com containing "comprised of". URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comprised+of%22+site%3Any...
Spot any mistakes? Do you understand what I mean in context anyway? So is it fine to use "breaks" when I mean "brakes"?
>"I upgraded the bits that slow my car down and my car slows down a lot better now."
does not help anyone learn that brakes is correct and breaks is not.
Now for forum comments or low-value writing it's not an issue, but you can argue that having someone who is experienced with using a style guide and communicating consistently adds some authoritativeness to the publications.
In the case of Wikipedia that is a valid thing to aim for.
This felt like an addition to ward of anticipated backlash. As if the author was aware their point might not be received favourably. Hmmm.
I reject the argument that this term is bad because its origins are messy. Similarly a lot of the points put forward here seem like justifications for style rather than actual points (yes - even those ones about supposed clarity).
To give an example: a while back a semi-notable object in my local area burned down. It has a short Wikipedia page of a few hundred words, but it is not something anyone would actually care about. At 02:00AM (in the middle of the night) I added this to its Wikipedia page, citing a Tweet from the official fire department.
Five minutes later the entire addition was removed, simply stating that "Twitter is not an acceptable source". Mind you, this is not an official policy: it is usually not allowed, but there are exceptions for instances like this. It was added back with less detail later on by a different user, who didn't even bother to cite any sources.
So yeah, don't bother trying to contribute to Wikipedia, unless you are willing to fight for every single edit.
In fact, there are many TV news outlets who have official YouTube channels -- why wouldn't these be acceptable as reliable sources, just like a newspaper or a live TV broadcast?
"draws" instead of "drawers", "brought" instead of "bought", "aircrafts", "softwares", and "could care less" can also DIAGF.
Jarrett Heather presents: Word Crimes (2014) (jarrettheather.com)
Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170420022942/https://jarretthe...
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Word Crimes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
>The Completed Music Video: In November 2013, "Weird Al" Yankovic asked me to direct an animated video for "Word Crimes", a parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" about the supposed abuse of proper language.
>The result of 500 hours of work in After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere goes by in 3 minutes, 44 seconds. I hope you find each one of them entertaining.
Word Crimes Animatic:
>This storyboard-in-motion took about 100 hours. Al signed off on this design on January 25th, 2014, only 3 weeks after he gave me his homemade "demo" for Word Crimes, which you can hear on the animatic soundtrack.
>If you watch very closely, you might notice a gag or two that didn't make it through to final animation or some very subtle changes in the lyrics.
HN Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820457
MrHeather on April 9, 2020 | parent | next [–]
When I first met with Al about this project, I was quick to point out that linguists would disagree with about a third of the "advice" he's giving out. His immediate reply was "WELL THEY'RE WRONG"--really loudly in the "Weird Al" character voice.
In my mind the joke is that the song's narrator is a know-it-all character that shouldn't be taken entirely seriously. But on the other hand, a lot of educators have contacted me to tell me they use the song as a learning tool.
DonHopkins on April 9, 2020 | prev | next [–]
Jarrett Heather is the artist behind Weird Al's "Word Crimes" video released in 2014 (at 48.4 million views now).
Word Crimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
"Word Crimes" is Weird Al's spot-on parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" with T.I. and Pharrell Williams. I think Weird Al's version is better and more educational than the original -- smart and catchy like a modern Schoolhouse Rock.
Blurred Lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU
Weird Al contacted Jarrett Heather after being impressed by "Shop Vac", his previous work with kinetic text (typographic animation), which he made using animation tools like AfterEffects.
Shop Vac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sOfO8Ei1g
This page on Jarrett Heather's web site tells the story and shows the art and technology behind the "Word Crimes" video. He's also published the Animatic storyboard-in-motion that took about 100 hours, to Weird Al's original home-made demo of the song! It's fascinating to compare them, and see how their ideas evolved from storyboard to final video.
Jarrett Heather presents: Word Crimes: https://web.archive.org/web/20170420022942/https://jarretthe...
>The Completed Music Video: In November 2013, "Weird Al" Yankovic asked me to direct an animated video for "Word Crimes", a parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" about the supposed abuse of proper language.
>The result of 500 hours of work in After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere goes by in 3 minutes, 44 seconds. I hope you find each one of them entertaining.
The Animatic: https://vimeo.com/102959171
>This storyboard-in-motion took about 100 hours. Al signed off on this design on January 25th, 2014, only 3 weeks after he gave me his homemade "demo" for Word Crimes, which you can hear on the animatic soundtrack.
>If you watch very closely, you might notice a gag or two that didn't make it through to final animation or some very subtle changes in the lyrics.
Jarrett originally designed the Live Journal logo back in 2000 or so, and parodied it in the video, with a broken pencil tip.
https://jarrett.livejournal.com/208198.html
Here's a great "Local Boy Makes Good" article and TV interview about Jarrett Heather from around the time the video came out, that was previously posted to HN -- I love his down-to-earth advice:
Elk Grove animator thrives as ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s partner in ‘Word Crimes’:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140725043615/https://www.sacbe...
Common Ground - Jarrett Heather “Word Crimes” Music Video Artist
>"If I did fail, it would have been Al's fault for hiring a software developer to make a cartoon."
>Word Crimes is 244 seconds long. Each second took two hours at the computer. 500 hours work, in all.
>"Yeah, no classes, just, you know. I think people really underestimate the value of just sitting down and reading the manual."
Maybe he can tackle “literally” once he is finished with “comprise”.
I’m curious how common this sort of thing is in other languages—words or phrases taking on the opposite meaning of their literal definition. “I could care less” is an example of a phrase that’s commonly used in English. Perhaps it’s debatable whether that one has achieved acceptance or not.
Natural languages aren't logical. Pretending or wishing otherwise is a fool's errand, and I guarantee there are many words and phrases you use all the time without thinking that are entirely illogical, but still make sense.
> words or phrases taking on the opposite meaning of their literal definition
The word you're looking for is "auto-antonym". Very common.
> “I could care less” ... Perhaps it’s debatable whether that one has achieved acceptance or not.
It has; the variance between could/couldn't is mainly regional. And it's an example of how phrases or idioms have independent meaning outside of the individual words.[1] Another good example is something like the [North American] "How are you?" - it's a greeting, not (usually) a literal question about how someone is.
For instance, "get in" or "get up" are different verbs from "get".
It's also possible for a participial adjective (formed by "to be" + participle + preposition) to be an idiom.
An example of this is "to be heard of" which means to be known or recognized. This has distinct semantics of its own, not simply coming from the phrasal "to hear of". You can be heard of, or have heard of.
"to be comprised of" is the same kind of adjective, which happens not to be derived from a "to comprise of" verb.
It's not necessary for a "V of" verb to actually exist in order for "be V of" to exist, and to have semantics distinct from V.
Second, comprised already means “consists of”. Unlike your example, heard, which is the past tense if hear. So “comprised of” essentially means “consists of of” which is nonsense. Hence why it’s better to say “comprises” rather than “comprised of”.
If we suppose that "comprised" means "consists of", it does not follow that "comprised of" means "consists of of".
(Setting aside, for a moment, that "comprised" does not mean "consists of").
Just like "make" possibly meaning "create" doesn't imply that "make up" can turn into "create up".
To comprise means for something to contain certain components (usually with a nuance that the list of components is complete). Since at least the 18th century, it has been used in a reverse way: components can comprise the whole. Charles Dickens used it in this reverse sense. It is from this reverse usage that the participial adjective arises: if components can comprise the whole, the whole is comprised of those components. Both the reverse usage and the adverb have been disputed, but are now hundreds of years old. The popularity of the participial adjective has wildly increased in the last half century.
There is a logical reason behind the the reversal of comprise that doesn't seem to get discussed.
Because comprise has a completeness nuance, it is actually a form of equivalence: if X comprises of parts A, B and C, it means it is equal to those parts. There is nothing else to X but A, B and C. Since equivalance commutes, comprise is expected to follow suit: A, B and C comprise X.
Comprise really means something like "exactly covers" or "corresponds to in an exhaustive whole/part relationship".
All that has happened is that we have lifted the restriction that the left operand of comprise must be the aggregate, and the right operand be the individual items.
> attacking him personally because you don’t agree with him
I was going to write "pseudo-intellectual twit on a lunatic correction rampage", but I went with "sad" to be nice.
As we have learned from Gödel, language is complete, but not consistent. Unlike math. So trying to argue about “comprise” using a more consistent logical framework of A, B, C, commutation, etc. is already a losing battle.
I could argue for a long time, having been both an English major, and a software engineer but the short of it is that words are tools.
Don’t use a hammer for a screw.
Sure you’re allowed to, and the language can evolve into everyone using a hammer on a screw, but the language losses something in the process.
There have always been, and always will be editors and people like the Wikipedia editor who help proscribe the usage of words to convey the correct and precise meaning to as many people as possible. The goal is to allow as many people as possible to have as precise an understanding of what is being communicated, with as much precision as is possible for something the must be complete but can’t be consistent. An example can be seen, even on this very page, of English learners, non-native speakers, thankful for what some call “pedantry”, so they can understand what is being said.
Without that, language can often become siloed, with the evolution of pidgins, and creoles etc, with the consequence that fewer and fewer people understand each other.
Imagine your grandmother trying to read and understand half of what is written on Twitter and TikTok.
For content that matters, and that includes Wikipedia, and published texts, editors who work for those publishers are the invisible people behind the scenes helping us all understand eachother.
You can scoff at “pseudo-intellectual twits”, but people often fail to realize that the world is often a better, richer place for intellectuals. The people who spend time on things most people find pedantic, often end up inventing things like transistors, understanding quantum physics, etc.
Software engineers often appreciate those types of results, but ignore or sweep away the results that lead to richer arts, language and cultural heritage.
> the language losses something in the process
Not all trends in usage are good and useful, and it's probably good to nip them in the bud. This one happened too long ago to fix now.
You cannot wish that single words be returned to 1750. If you want to return to the English of 1750, you have to want all of it, including giving back "sensitivity" and using "sensibility".
With comprise being used commutatively, what exactly have we lost? It is this:
Suppose that comprise is used with a pair of words, and you don't know what either of then mean. Out of any context, you hear " ...the froznitch comprises the gronfuzzle ...".
If comprise is unidirectional, always meaning "whole comprises parts", then you can infer that froznitch refers to some aggregate, and gronfuzzle denotes some set of parts (in spite of both words appearing to be singular).
What we have lost by comprise being commutative is the ability to make that inference.
That inference has little value, because if you have no idea what the words mean, it makes no difference whether you know which refers to the parts and which to the whole.
> with the evolution of pidgins, and creoles etc
"Drivel spoken by poor colored folk is destroying our language!"
> What we have lost by comprise being commutative is the ability to make that inference.
I think you’ve realized the value of trying to maintain precise meanings of words.
In fact, technically, we haven’t really lost the ability to make that inference, since that’s what the word means. That’s why its definition is “be made up of”. The froznitch is made up of gronfuzzle. Adding “of” to the end shouldn’t change anything. The usage of the word in reverse is the problem, and has been maintained as incorrect for hundreds of years. “Nine players comprise the team” is not grammatically correct. (Although as is noted, this has changed somewhat recently, and editors would argue not for the better)
So in fact this proves the point that editors making such changes are what help maintain the value of precise language.
I’ll just leave you with the following, since arguing definitions of words is always a losing battle, since language is too fluid.
It’s not wrong, nor “bad” to wish words change or be used in certain ways, especially when common usage of a word can cause confusion or be more ambiguous.
There’s always a place for editors, those seeking to make the written word more precise and clear, and even if you disagree with this one, or others, I would simply say that the assessment that editors are pointless, or “twits” is unfair and dismissive of their value.
> “Drivel spoken by poor colored folk is destroying our language!"
This statement comes across as virtue signaling. Pidgins, creoles etc are spoken by people of all skin colors and statuses. They are also amazing parts of cultural history.
But there’s a difference between speaking with your family, fellows, community etc, and publishing written text for mass consumption.
I don’t think anyone would argue that we’d be better off with encyclopedia’s being published in pidgin, leet speak etc etc.
That's what the word means (that's all it means) if the calendar reads 1750. If that's the English you want you should want all of it: no cherry picking of single word reverts.
> Adding “of” to the end shouldn’t change anything
Then feel free to pretend that one definition of comprise is "to be made" rather than "to be made of".
It's perfectly clear why some people don't like "comprised of", and what their reasoning is. That reasoning is seriously flawed, though, on multiple accounts.
The first is that language changes. This particular ship sailed so long ago, that it literally could only have sailed; the age of steam power had not yet dawned. In that time we have seen changes like sensitivity taking the place of sensibility.
Secondly, "be comprised of" follows sound word-forming processes inherent in the English language. It's obeying certain rules, just not ones that are above the sophistication of internet grammar cops. There is no rule that the participial adjective "be comprised of" has to relate to the verb "comprise" in a specific way.
Also, wiki bulk edit tools exist, it's not like they're actually editing tens of thousands of articles manually. If you keep track of a bunch of pages, you'll spot a lot of such more or less fully automated cleaning/manual of style/formatting bots and tools that don't really change the content of the articles themselves (some consistency doesn't hurt I guess).
Because with other classic examples, such as the verb "to table" meaning the opposite thing in the US and UK, you can at least always figure it out from context (if not from the accent, ha). And we know that "inflammable" is never used to mean fireproof.
But the two opposite meanings of "nonplussed", there's very often zero contextual indication as to which meaning is intended. And both meanings are used frequently, so it's in this total unresolved limbo state.
For me, it's the one word I won't use at all, precisely for this reason. There's simply no way to be properly understood.
There are not enough eyeballs in the world. This dude can't even use colons and semi-colons correctly in his essay.
Ultimately it's a small price to pay though.
says "I think they apply that same art when they put together an album or a band" which is really not your decision to make! In no sense is composing music the same as composing a band; they're two utterly different meanings of the word. This argument is so flimsy that it seems like intentional BS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exmor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Exmor
(Original list) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elk_Salmon/List_of_Sony_E...
It takes constant vigilance to avoid such people taking over a site and driving everyone away.
I also wonder what the correlation is between such people and being on the spectrum: The need for rules, the comfort and predictability of order and consistency and that ability to exercise control or power over something (this last one being applicable to pretty much everyone).
No hate intended here. It’s just musing out loud.
If hate is what would get them to stop, they'd have quit before they began.
At some point, the toxicity will generate a wakeup call among normal people and they will have to face facts that a really rotten contingent of loudmouth pushy sorts are squatting in the culture, acting as if they own it.
Brilliant way to make a decision in a community. I wish more discussions had room for such thought patterns.
> Erroneous Use of is comprised of:
> The phrase is comprised of is increasingly common but has long been considered poor usage. It was not a frequent collocation until about 1950. Replace it with some other, more accurate phrase -- e.g. ...
> "Moreover, the crowd in the mysterious room was comprised of [read comprised or was comprised of] adults, and Harry knew there were not nearly that many teachers at Hogwarts" J.K Rowling ...
The correct phrase is "try TO"
I'm on a one-person crusade to fix this throughout the English speaking world, by occasionally ranting about it to a relatively small group of indifferent people on the internet. Is it working?
This is perfectly acceptable in my opinion, it's an elliptical form of: "Why don't you try (to do whatever "this" is) and see (if it will work)?".
"Comprise" means the opposite of what people who use "comprised of" think it means.
While "¹
Profile of him: https://medium.com/backchannel/meet-the-ultimate-wikignome-1...
Interesting comments around social on this specific persona - the literal grammar nazi.
Why change "comprised of" to "consists of" (for example) rather than changing it to "comprises"? If you are so hung up on the usage of that word, why not use it in the way you think is correct rather than trying to excise it from Wikipedia?
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/boobs-tits-wikipedia-tit...
This is the grammar equivalent of that.
It's the exact same problem.
This has to be the perfect example for the usage of the word aggrandize itself.
I cannot imagine dedicating 15+ years of my life over something that is grammatically incorrect in some contexts at its worst — but is frequently just a stylistic choice.
Of all the hills to die on and disrupt prose over, the author chooses this one. Wikipedia is full of poor writing and sentence construction, but this is worthy of 90,000 edits? Unbelievable.
Telling someone to “touch grass” is incredibly overdone and passé, but this person really needs to touch grass.
Sounds like it barely takes any effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
Bad
Sick
Cleave
Sanction
Bolt
LOL, can't wait for this person to dedicate their life to fixing the Japanese wikipedia.
(Trying hard not to mention “functionality”, too. Ooops.) :-)
The original usage is absolutely fine.
A very small part of me wants to create a bot which reverses those edits, and then changes his own articles to include the term.
people over 35 shouldn't need to deal with petty shit like this