[HN Gopher] Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of "comprised of" ___________________________________________________________________ Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of "comprised of" Author : shaklee3 Score : 354 points Date : 2023-05-06 04:57 UTC (18 hours ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | melagonster wrote: | In the context of taxonomy, the term "comprise" is commonly used | in research articles, while "constitute" is not appropriate to | describe the relationship between phyla and classes. To convey | the intended meaning that phyla exclusively contain the classes | mentioned, the phrase "phyla are comprised of classes" is | unambiguous. This formulation signifies that the phyla encompass | and solely consist of the mentioned classes. Referring to the | relationship as "a phylum comprises classes" simply denotes that | these classes are included within the phylum. By adhering to | these distinctions, the paragraph conveys a more technical and | professional tone. | ludston wrote: | I enjoy collecting little things like this to annoy the grammar | gatekeepers. Why say "regardless" when "irregardless" means the | same thing but also annoys prescriptivists? "Ironical" instead of | "ironic" and "less" instead of "fewer". | | Now that I know, "comprised of" fits in this category, it's | definitely going to be a part of the everyday lexicon. | devnullbrain wrote: | The use of prescriptivists as though it was a sports team is | ironic. It's actually _you_ who 's pushing a certain use of | language despite knowing that it's ambiguous. _You 're_ the one | enforcing your language on others. | kevinh wrote: | Communication through language seems like it's by its very | nature enforcing your language on others. | devnullbrain wrote: | Ban nghi tot hon neu chung ta giao tiep bang nghia moi | nguoi khong the hieu ko? | a2800276 wrote: | ... and being antisocial. What's the point of doing things | with the sole motivation of annoying people? | ludston wrote: | Firstly because it makes me laugh, but also it's because | it's actually gatekeeping other people's language that is | excluding and antisocial. I firmly believe that we ought to | accept the language that others use when the speakers | intention is clear, even if they "don't speak good". The | uneducated don't deserve scorn by default just because | nobody rapped them across the knuckles when they used "coz" | instead of "because". And that's ignoring even that many of | these grammatically incorrect but often used phrases come | from minority groups and shitting on people for using them | is actually a subtle avenue for (probably unintended) | racism. | devnullbrain wrote: | Except for if someone hasn't been educated what | 'ironical' means, in which case you'd like to dunk on | them. | ludston wrote: | If somebody doesn't know what ironical means they are | either a child, ESL or one of the lucky 10000 and | therefore don't deserve any disdain? | pornel wrote: | This literally begs the question. | charles_f wrote: | You are pure entropy! | ajkjk wrote: | > Less confusing in musical context | | 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. | maperz wrote: | ,,Many writers use this phrase to aggrandize a sentence -- to | intentionally make it longer and more sophisticated" | | This has to be the perfect example for the usage of the word | aggrandize itself. | hatsune wrote: | If contain and consist and replace a new word and it is supposed | to be an encyclopaedia then maybe it is a legit move. It's like | English professor ranting about use vs. utilise. Mixing words are | bad attempts and precise wording is objectively better, tho I | highly question if the machine effort replacing a ambiguous word | is good enough to detect what it actually means in context. | infostud wrote: | Yes I've been changing "utilise" to "use" by hand in Wikipedia | for many years. When I read "utilise" I hear Homer Simpson in a | top hat trying to be posh. | bloak wrote: | Perhaps some people find monosyllabic words embarrassing. | Another word sometimes misused instead of "use" is | "leverage", and you'll often find "ubiquitous" in the same | paragraph in engineering/marketing contexts. But "leverage" | should not always be replaced with "use": sometimes "exploit" | would be a better alternative. And "leverage" has a proper | meaning in finance, of course. | captainmuon wrote: | Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually prefer the use "is | comprised of" over "comprises". For the supposedly correct | version, you can almost always say it differently: | | 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 :-) | dheera wrote: | I believe technically speaking, "is composed of" is correct, | "is comprised of" is not. Although "is comprised of" sounds | more elite. | joe__f wrote: | I usually see 'a proton is made up of three quarks' | crazygringo wrote: | Yes, for whatever reason "is comprised of" feels like a | natural, abeit rather technical/formal, expression. It reads | clearly, something I'd expect to see in technical documentation | or an encyclopedia article or non-fiction book. | | 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. | sebzim4500 wrote: | I would object to the sentence "A proton is comprised of three | quarks" on scientific grounds rather than grammatical ones. | Only a tiny minority of the mass of the proton is in the three | constituent quarks. | uptownfunk wrote: | Has the fellow heard of something called find and replace? isn't | there some way to do this in batch? | ulizzle wrote: | "As one who subscribes to the anti-comprised-of doctrine | described above, I can tell you it triggers the same "what an | idiot" neurons in us as "could of" and "could care less". If I | can spare any readers that discomfort without hurting anyone | else, why wouldn't I?" | | There are not enough eyeballs in the world. This dude can't even | use colons and semi-colons correctly in his essay. | malwarebytess wrote: | This kind of tyrannical obsession over minutiae, the sheer | spectacle and narcissism, leaves me feeling ill. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | I love these one-person crusades against present reality. Words | mean whatever a critical mass of people want them to mean. For | example, the usage of the present tense here: | | _" 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. | cratermoon wrote: | "ATM machine"? RAS syndrome. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | Lol out loud! | dllthomas wrote: | I literally lolled. | spencerchubb wrote: | > Words mean whatever a critical mass of people want them to | mean. | | 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. | KeplerBoy wrote: | There's no governing body that decides how the English | language is to be used. It's defined by the people as they | write, speak and interpret it. | | French for example, is different. They have council with | official authority over the language. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise | SilasX wrote: | Whether a language has a governing body is irrelevant to | whether you should attempt to use clear, easily-understood | language. The concerns apply equally in French and English. | KeplerBoy wrote: | Sure i meant to point out that there's not necessarily a | difference between natural and clear, concise language. | Aeolun wrote: | I think the author is talking about a general scenario, not one | of their past edits. | jzb wrote: | Allow me to quote you back to you. "It's also not really | serverless to begin with, because at the end of the day code is | being executed on a physical device that many of us might call | a "server" [1] | | 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 | havermeyer wrote: | I wish I could find the article I read a while ago on the | history, but it reminds me of how "nauseous" ended up | becoming synonymous with "nauseated." | [deleted] | SilasX wrote: | Semi-related, it always bothered me that we use the term | "wireless" for something that still has wires (just not | between the endpoints). Though I don't object, or have a | better alternative, and I get the logic of calling it | wireless. | kolinko wrote: | "Radio" would be a proper replacement for "wireless". | jamiek88 wrote: | Funnily enough older people in England still call the | radio 'the wireless'! | 4ndrewl wrote: | And my grandad used to say exactly the same thing about | wireless radios - 'why do they call it the wireless when | it's full of wires!' | [deleted] | prerok wrote: | The better alternative is cordless, no? At least some | products do use that (e.g. cordless mouse). Of course, | wireless is now so widely used it might not make sense to | fight it :) | 1lint wrote: | I think in the case of "serverless" we still share a common | understanding of what the term means, even if the term itself | is misleading. This "comprised of" issue is different in that | it can easily cause misunderstanding between archaic and | modern users of the phrase, where meaning is inverted. | sebzim4500 wrote: | Just because he's a hypocrite doesn't mean he's wrong in this | instance. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | That's great example! That post is an unserious riff as a | response to another post that meant to assert the correctness | an individual's personal definition of a term on what I found | to be tenuous pedantic grounds. | dixie_land wrote: | I could agree more! Irregardless of what words actually mean we | should just use whatever we want. | mrexroad wrote: | Inconceivable! | gadders wrote: | [flagged] | robertoandred wrote: | I'm enjoying the argument that the meaning of words in an | encyclopedia should be subjective. | starkparker wrote: | > This thread is literally a clout ATM machine for a group | comprised of pedants. | | That's most high-level Wikipedia editors in a nutshell. | bloppe wrote: | The problem here is the ambiguity. Someone who uses the | original meaning of comprise will interpret a sentence in the | opposite way of someone using the new. "America comprises many | states and territories" -> "Many states and territories are | comprised of America" have the same meaning with the original | definition. With the new definition, you'd have to invert both | sentences. | | 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. | dorfsmay wrote: | Biweekly is not its own antonym but it means two completely | different things (every other week and twice a week) which | for me as rendered it useless since you cannot know which | meaning is intended. | | 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. | FR10 wrote: | Yeah the RAE is super useful to end debates on what a word | means, thats it. I see no issues with language not | "evolving enough". Spanish written/talked a century ago is | different than what it's spoken presently, even if the | words mean the same. | blipvert wrote: | Quite | lolinder wrote: | > 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=%22comprise | d+o... (this works because ~no one uses comprise in the | passive voice in the old meaning) | smcl wrote: | And use of the suggested (and more correct) alternative | "composed of" is more common than both of them combined: ht | tps://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22comprised+o. | .. | karaterobot wrote: | How do we decide whether someone is using a word incorrectly, | or if we should update our present reality? | | 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. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | I am happy that you brought up accuracy __and__ precision! | | 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. | Grustaf wrote: | While you could certainly argue that "words mean what people | think they mean", that is not a reason to use words in ways | that are CURRENTLY considered wrong, especially not in a | lexicon. | | 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. | everybodyknows wrote: | What is a "clout ATM machine"? | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | An ATM machine that dispenses clout. | bluepod4 wrote: | The present tense is fine in this case. | | 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. | lolinder wrote: | I'm pretty sure it's a joke: those _were_ better alternatives | but they 're equally valid now and it's time for the author | to let the language change and move on. | bluepod4 wrote: | Yeah, I see that now. Instead of italicizing the word | "were" to place emphasis like you did, OP italicized most | of the quote and not the word that needed emphasis. Ha. | | For this reason, I thought his "ATM clout" statement meant | the opposite of what he meant. | hoosieree wrote: | Surely you mean AT Machine? | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | I'm a big fan of AT-ATs but I like AT-STs as well. | nirvdrum wrote: | If words don't matter, then ignore the edits. People tend to | copy what they see. If they see it written with the original | definition, maybe that's what the hivemind will adopt. I don't | see a problem with that and I don't see the point in attacking | people that care. I'm sure you have things in your life you | care about. | gnulinux wrote: | No, the point is words do matter, and they mean what people | think they mean. Not people from 100 years ago from a | prestige university who wrote a dictionary. Languages are | fluid, they change and when they do change the present | reality _is_ the way the language is spoken. | nirvdrum wrote: | Obviously there's no universal agreement on which phrase is | correct. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having a discussion. I | don't know how many people we're even talking about. I'm | certain the group that uses "comprises" instead of | "comprised of" is not entirely "people from 100 years ago | from prestige university who wrote a dictionary." | | 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. | dionidium wrote: | This thread is proof of the opposite, in fact. Since neither | "composed of" nor "consists of" generate 300+ comment Hacker | News threads, they are plainly better. | itslennysfault wrote: | Well.... tell that to the AP style guide I guess. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | Surely their oversight will lead to a decision about which | usage to sanction. | | You can submit your thoughts here! | | https://www.apstylebook.com/ask_the_editors#submit_tab | dataflow wrote: | What I don't quite understand is the resistance. It's a fact | that some people (and I mean readers, not the editors) don't | like, understand, and/or accept the new meaning of this word, | whether we like it or not. Whereas _everyone_ should be | agreeing that the alternatives are fine. So if you have an | alternative everyone is fine with... it seems like a no-brainer | to use it? When you have something that everyone is happy with, | why insist on an alternative that some people hate? | woooooo wrote: | There are a billion of us speaking the language. It's a | little presumptuous to tell a billion people what to do and | there should probably be some amount of default resistance. | JW_00000 wrote: | There's 380 million native speaker of this language, but | another billion non-native speakers. If this change helps | that latter billion, should the former 380 million object? | | (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.) | dataflow wrote: | Nobody is telling a billion people what to do though? We're | just talking about what word to use in an article edited by | a handful of people. The billion people can keep using | whatever words they want. | amelius wrote: | The billion people prefer to read the language that they | also use, in all its glory. | | 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. | dataflow wrote: | Do you really believe the loss society would suffer from | editing "comprised of" in Wikipedia articles is actually | comparable to what it would suffer if they discriminated | against half the population on TV? | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | I can only speak for myself, but the actual phrase | "comprised of" is the _least_ interesting thing to | discuss when it comes to this topic. | | 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. | dataflow wrote: | But again, this isn't even about correcting others' | language. People are fine to use whatever language that | serves them personally well in their lives - but this | isn't about that. It's about writing encyclopedia | articles in a way that's best for their readers. Every | comment I'm reading here so far seems to insist this is | somehow personal toward the author and correcting them, | whereas it really isn't. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | > It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way | that's best for their readers. | | 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. | dataflow wrote: | "Best for readers" is not particularly subjective here. | We're talking about an encyclopedia whose audience is the | entire English-speaking population. Its #1 job is to | communicate relevant information on each topic clearly | and accurately to the broadest audience in each language | - not to match anyone's preferred terminology, write | Shakespearean prose, or push the boundaries of the | language. We already have multiple words that are | perfectly well-suited for use with the intended meaning - | we don't even have that luxury with so many other words. | Deliberately picking a word that confuses some readers | and annoys others just introduces problems and friction | where there don't need to be any. | cogitoergofutuo wrote: | > "Best for readers" is not particularly subjective here. | | 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. | nirvdrum wrote: | Wouldn't this argument cut both ways? Presumably the people | that started using the phrase incorrectly were bucking the | trend. | nitwit005 wrote: | I dislike the way you communicate. It's wrong. I don't care | if a majority of people agree with you. That doesn't matter. | | Can't see why anyone would be annoyed. | dataflow wrote: | Why take this personally? This is not a personal battle. | It's isn't about disliking the way a person communicates, | nor about it being right or wrong. It's about the way | Wikipedia articles communicate, namely, in a way that | hopefully minimizes friction for their readers (whom it's | there for - it's not there for the editors), without | compromising on accuracy. I would think editors really | ought to be able to distinguish "I like this word more" and | "I think this word is best for readers". | nitwit005 wrote: | You asked why there is resistance. I summarized a portion | of their argument, in blunt terms, as that makes it clear | why some people might be upset. | newaccount74 wrote: | It's disrespectful to change another authors words for no good | reason. | | 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. | newmanah223 wrote: | I use a chrome addon to ban all Wikipedia results from search. | ignite wrote: | I have to admit: I have a few phrases like this, that I'd like to | do this to! :-) | bmitc wrote: | Are there any profiles of Wikipedia editors? I have to admit that | they seem like another breed to me. I don't even bother editing | Wikipedia, not that I ever did in quantity, just as I saw things. | Everytime I have, even to correct some clear error, it is usually | immediately reversed or removed altogether (things as simple as | correcting the title of something). They have very strange | conventions and their own Wiki language in terms of how they | speak in comments and edit articles. | askin4it wrote: | [flagged] | ezekiel68 wrote: | I don't know the right solution to this problem, but I wish there | were some kind of effective defense mechanism in open society | against activist superminorities. Pedants tilting at windmills | shouldn't be able to alter the cultural landscape this easily. I | am aware that their problem and my problem are privileged "first- | world problems". The seeds of the open society carry the germ of | this pathology, I guess. | bluecalm wrote: | Idk man, some good soul corrected a common language error on a | site where many authors are not even native English speakers. | | 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. | dmix wrote: | Society always has people who contribute to specific things way | more than the general population. And not even just generally | in specific niches but some people are just highly productive | and highly motivated. | | 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. | AlbertCory wrote: | You know, I'll take a very minority POV: overall, Wikipedia | does a pretty decent job of reporting the facts. I'll trust | what they say about some non-controversial person or event much | more than any other media outlet. | | 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. | ghaff wrote: | I'm not sure that is a very minority POV. | | 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. | wolverine876 wrote: | > I wish there were some kind of effective defense mechanism in | open society against activist superminorities. Pedants tilting | at windmills shouldn't be able to alter the cultural landscape | this easily. I am aware that their problem and my problem are | privileged "first-world problems". The seeds of the open | society carry the germ of this pathology, I guess. | | 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. | JW_00000 wrote: | After your first sentence, I thought you were going to argue | the opposite. This person's arguments seem to hold water. | Aren't the people that argue with him and want to revert his | edits a (very strange) activist superminority? | | Maybe we need a defense mechanism against bike-shedding, no | matter what color bikeshed one prefers? | jaggederest wrote: | > This person's arguments seem to hold water. | | Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive | arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use | it however they want. | ghaff wrote: | Nonsense. Editors will edit based on whatever style guides | they use and what's generally considered "proper" usage | while respecting the author's stylistic choices as much as | possible. | | 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. | jaggederest wrote: | Right, and they're free to do so, just don't try to | justify it by saying it's "correct". I'm not saying we | should write poorly, or deliberately sloppily, just _it | 's at the author or editor's preference._ | | 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. | ghaff wrote: | >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. | wolverine876 wrote: | > I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain | contexts | | Why AP style - written specifically for journalists - | instead of all the other styles such as APA, Chicago, | etc. etc.? | ghaff wrote: | The contexts are blog posts and press releases often | targeted at journalists, who will often copy-paste | sections, so standard company stye is to write in a way | that conforms to what they use so they don't need to fix | it up. | | Otherwise, I/we use Chicago and Oxford comma. | appletrotter wrote: | Someone has already pointed out that this attitude can be | described as a "prescriptivist" attitude. | | 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. | umanwizard wrote: | The rules of French are not really legally defined; | that's a common misconception. Yeah, there is a state- | funded cultural organization in France called the | Academie francaise that claims that regulating the | language is part of its mandate, but its "decisions" have | no legal effect whatsoever and are widely ignored, even | by the government and education system. | giardini wrote: | "Comprised of" grates at my mind: the sooner that phrase | and the authors using it are cast into Hell the better! | | https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-you- | use-co... | pbhjpbhj wrote: | The Wikipedia editor here is not allowing personal use, | part of their proposal is to edit quotes too - to me it | reads as if the person has problems with compulsion and | doesn't want to stop themselves from "correcting people" | (which is not correction so much as forcing that editor's | own personal linguistic predilections on others). | | There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. | (Wording chosen purposefully!). | kelnos wrote: | This part of the editor's process bothered me, too. | Overall I agree with his premise and have no problem with | what he's doing. In fact, I think he is improving | Wikipedia with his edits. | | 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. | ghaff wrote: | Fixing "it's" to "its" transparently in many cases is one | thing. More significant changes to what someone | presumably meant deserves a [SIC]. Something that's not | wrong but isn't your stylistic preference? No way. | dragonwriter wrote: | > More significant changes to what someone presumably | meant deserves a [SIC]. | | "[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. | ghaff wrote: | I actually knew that :-) Busy day. | | 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.) | efraim wrote: | Why is it ok to be prescriptive with things like spelling | of words but not grammar or the meaning of words? 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. I have no problem calling out such use as | being wrong. | kelnos wrote: | OP discusses this; the language has _not_ really evolved. | Certainly there are some dictionaries that acknowledge the | newer confusing usage, but always as an alternate. | | 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? | crazygringo wrote: | > _but always as an alternate._ | | 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. | | [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise | philwelch wrote: | ur looking at this from the pov of a linguist...this guy is | not a linguist, he is an editor...ppl can use language | however they want but i dunno if anyone would write a wiki | arty the way im writing this comment...even tho u can | perfectly understand what im saying | epgui wrote: | Grammar and style guides are prescriptive in nature. | jaggederest wrote: | Which is why we should ignore them and write however we | like. | | Note that I'm not saying we should write poorly, or | deliberately sloppily, just _it 's at the author or | editor's preference_. | epgui wrote: | You do you, but I think it's insane not to want to have | more norms around the particular uses of language. We | already barely understand each other (see any political | conversation or pseudoscientific debate on the internet | where words get thrown around in abandon, with an | abundance of ambiguous constructions). | | The English/American are culturally less prescriptive | around grammar, but other languages (such as French) are | often much more prescriptive with it. | pc86 wrote: | Having majored in political science it's rare that | political arguments are due to a lack of understanding. | They're almost always due to just prioritizing things | differently. | epgui wrote: | I think that's true only when both people have a certain | degree of sophistication, but in the vast majority of | cases involving laypeople, basic theory (including | semantics / working definitions for basic concepts) and | reading comprehension skills are probably limiting | factors. | mxkopy wrote: | The solution is to call it what it is - mental illness - and | treat it as such. | | 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. | choppaface wrote: | 1. Create a Wikipedia page explaining the confusion here | (borrowing from author's essay). But also ratify the | "incorrect" as "not considered harmful and is permissible on | wikipedia" | | 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. | ikekkdcjkfke wrote: | Fork it | make3 wrote: | one guy deciding to change 90k articles unilateraly is kind of | insane indeed. | tinideiznaimnou wrote: | It's just data. | SoftTalker wrote: | Wait until AIs start making changes. Human editors won't be | able to keep up. | tayo42 wrote: | i find grammar obsession on the internet to be insane | overall. you ever use the wrong their/there/theyre and have | some guy reply with some unhinged comment. such odd behavior | npteljes wrote: | Grammar is many things packed in one. For one, it can | signal a bunch of things, like maturity, superficiality, | seriousness, intelligence. The lack of tolerance, like in | you're example, is likely just someone who wants to vent, | not a genuine concern for grammar. | | 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. | epgui wrote: | I don't know about the unhinged comments, but grammar is | important and people who don't care are wrong not to care. | tayo42 wrote: | Thats just your opinion. if you understand me and i | understand you then were good. my experience with grammar | is that it just explains how we talk, like music theory. | when your young and learning to speak, you just speak, | your parent (probably) don't sit down with a white board | and explain noun and complex verbs tenses at the age of | four | junon wrote: | Grammar is a linguistic study and more than just "like, a | general guideline." | | For example, "you're" and "your" are two very different | words. | | Let people obsess. They're not hurting you. | epgui wrote: | There's also a well-known thing about English in that | it's culturally much less prescriptive about grammar than | other languages. The American-English philosophy around | grammar doesn't necessarily transpose to other grammars | around the world. | OJFord wrote: | American English is trying to do away with adverbs | entirely! Sometimes I find myself shouting '-ly!' at the | screen. (I just wanted to leave that comment here _real | quick_.) | [deleted] | OJFord wrote: | I understand you, but it's more difficult than if you | wrote correctly (according to my arseholish | prescriptivist rules, if you like, yes) - you're | communicating less effectively by not subscribing to the | standard rules; I misread you, take longer to understand | your meaning, it takes patience and begins to frustrate. | SoftTalker wrote: | Also spoken language is looser. You can't hear the | difference between "there," "their," and "they're" but | your brain fills in the appropriate meaning. When you see | it written though, there is a slight mental stumble as | you initially parse the word as written, then understand | that it's wrong, and make the appropriate mental | substitution. | epgui wrote: | Spoken language is also different in that, as you | correctly point out, it is at times more limited in how | much information it contains, but also, in other ways it | can be much richer in information than the equivalent | writing. Things like nonverbal or tonality can contain a | lot of helpful or contextually-relevant information that | cannot be found in writing. | | 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) | OJFord wrote: | That's highly accent dependent / | | 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 | / | epgui wrote: | Sorry, what things were good and when? Your young what? | tayo42 wrote: | If we were speaking out loud you could figure it out | epgui wrote: | And yet, we're not speaking out loud. | umanwizard wrote: | But you _did_ understand him. You're pretending you | didn't because if that were true it'd reinforce your | point, but it's not in fact true. | epgui wrote: | You can't possibly know whether or not I understood them. | | 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 | umanwizard wrote: | Absolutely nonsensical bullshit. Everyone reading this | knows you perfectly understood "were" to mean "we're" | here. Engaging in the fictional universe where you didn't | is a waste of time. | epgui wrote: | It's not bullshit, it's what explains a large class of | misunderstandings. | | What's bullshit is people who think they know what other | people think. | pc86 wrote: | We're not speaking. You might as well be saying "if | things were different, they'd be different." | fnordpiglet wrote: | It doesn't seem like it's that easy a task. I'd argue improving | grammar and language in an encyclopedia isn't altering the | cultural landscape, I don't think the usage of "comprised of" | is a meaningful cultural artifact that requires embodying in an | encyclopedias language style. I'd note the person also allows | for people to revert the change without consequence if they | feel passionate about the cultural landscape of "comprised of" | usage vs generally accepted better alternatives. | | 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. | chris_wot wrote: | You need to look at those who edit categories. Wikipedia no | longer gives much credence to those who create, research and | improve articles. It is now full of people poking around the | edges. | | 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_... | jmull wrote: | > Pedants tilting at windmills shouldn't be able to alter the | cultural landscape this easily | | 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. | loudandskittish wrote: | I'm finding this entire comment section confusing and I | genuinely want to understand what is so offensive about what | this editor did. To me this does not look like a problem that | requires a solution and I even appreciate the essay (I've | always had a hard time understanding the usage of 'comprises'). | | ...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? | crazygringo wrote: | The editor is imposing a controversial viewpoint on tens of | thousands of Wikipedia articles that is not supported by | authority or consensus. Merriam-Webster, for example, | disagrees with the editor [1]. | | 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. | | [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise | BuyMyBitcoins wrote: | I don't think anyone thinks this person is _genuinely_ evil. | I sense people are reacting against what they perceive as a | busybody who has a disturbing compulsion to control something | that isn't even an issue. | | 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. | kelnos wrote: | I don't see this as a problem. | | 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". | Acrobatic_Road wrote: | The solution is to organize your own superminority to build a | new regime. | version_five wrote: | The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. | | 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. | anigbrowl wrote: | Editing for grammatical/stylistic clarity isn't an alteration | of the 'cultural landscape.' By that standard nobody would be | allowed to pick up litter. | echelon wrote: | > some kind of effective defense mechanism in open society | against activist superminorities. | | 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. | npteljes wrote: | I think you mean that it cares about usage, not rules. | bbor wrote: | It is my firm belief that language is, at its core, comprised | of usage and usage alone! | matteoraso wrote: | >I don't know the right solution to this problem, but I wish | there were some kind of effective defense mechanism in open | society against activist superminorities. | | 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_... | crazygringo wrote: | > _Wikipedia is nothing but a superminority_ | | 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. | cmonnow wrote: | [dead] | alasdair_ wrote: | >a minority of the minority produces a lot | | 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. | tinideiznaimnou wrote: | It's a really neat division of labor. Subject matter | experts provide the facts from a subject matter-focused | viewpoint. Those are known to be rough around the edges, so | editors make sure they fit together in a more or less | cohesive picture of the world. | | 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. | harles wrote: | > 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. | chris_va wrote: | I actually ran a full character-level diff with move | detection over the entire wikipedia edit history (few | thousand machines) back in ~2008. | | 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. | Meekro wrote: | I'm reminded of an old saying, "The world is run by those who | show up." | theturtletalks wrote: | I prefer this one: | | "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 | itronitron wrote: | The small group doesn't have to be thoughtful (and they | often aren't), they just need to be committed. | theturtletalks wrote: | The strong commitment and resolve within a small group | inspires others to join. | lo_zamoyski wrote: | Oddly enough, in Margaret Mead's case, that seems to mean | lying to the world about Samoan promiscuity to | rationalize her own adultery (implying that in the "state | of nature", whatever that means, it's no big deal), thus | contributing in her own way to the groundwork for the | disaster that was the sexual revolution. | clove wrote: | I've never heard of this. Can you give me the TL;DR? | consilient wrote: | Coming of Age in Samoa is controversial but the claim | that Mead was actively lying is pretty untenable. | | 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. | rvba wrote: | The minority wants you to think that the website wouldnt work | without them. | | 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. | jtsuken wrote: | > Wikipedia is nothing but a superminority making the website | their playground, though[0]. | | 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] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Wikipedia | psychphysic wrote: | Wikipedia is _entirely_ controlled by activist super | minorities. | | 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. | hkt wrote: | [citation needed] | vivegi wrote: | It is ironic that The New York Time Manual of Style and Usage [1] | cited by the article as one of the authoritative sources often | doesn't follow its own style guide. A Google search for | "comprised of" in nytimes.com [2] gives around 4600+ results. A | cursory glance at the first page of search results and the | snippet text in the results all look fine. | | 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... | medler wrote: | NYT notoriously makes a ton of errors in grammar and usage. The | "NYTtypos" Twitter account is amusing reading if you're into | that sort of thing. https://twitter.com/nyttypos | goodcanadian wrote: | I'm not sure I agree with the pedantry, but I'll leave that to | the side and ask: | | 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? | jl6 wrote: | Wow, there's a lot of unjustified negativity in this thread. The | whole encyclopedia (and a whole bunch of the wider world of | computing) is built out of this kind of hyper-focused nerding | over details. | | 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. | dotnet00 wrote: | This isn't useful nerding over details. It's more like that | annoying person who goes around GitHub making pull requests to | big projects with just some pointless wording tweaks in the | documentation so they can claim to have contributed to the | project on their resume. | SiempreViernes wrote: | Since there isn't agreement on this actually _being_ janitorial | work (in the sense that they are not simply enforcing the | Wikipedia styleguide), this is not some completely innocent | activity. | | 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. | lIl-IIIl wrote: | In "Reaction to the project" the author links to a "semi- | vandalism" charge. You can read the discussion among | Wikipedia editors there if you're interested (spoiler alert - | most found it valuable and nobody thought it was vandalism). | jmholla wrote: | That's by their own account. Multiple times they mention | they don't do the best of caring about our tracking | negative comments. They do however do the opposite. It's | important to remember this is written by them and is all | from their perspective. | [deleted] | spcebar wrote: | I wouldn't call this janitorial work. This seems to me to be | less like someone cleaning a building than someone replacing | every pencil in the building with a #2 pencil, because they | believe that type of pencil is the correct type of pencil to | use. They haven't made anything materially better, except by | their own rigid definition of what the best pencil is--and | maybe there are advantages of using a #2 pencil over a #3 | pencil, but if you brought that pencil to work, there's a | chance you brought that pencil because you prefer writing with | it, and you wouldn't want someone, despite their best | intentions, replacing your pencil with a 'better' one. Almost | no one is going to look at the graphite and not be able to | recognize words because it's a #3 pencil and not a #2 pencil. | | In my opinion, this isn't what built Wikipedia, this is what | made Wikipedia hostile to new contributors. | crazygringo wrote: | > _He's not shoving it in our faces_ | | 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. | masswerk wrote: | I think, we should make an exception, if the same sentence also | includes a reversal of "consists". Example: "The right of way is | comprised of tracks, sleepers and ballast, while locomotive and | wagons consist a train." (Rationale: We're clearly facing the | utterance of an AI with suboptimal vectorization and there is | simply nothing we can do about this.) ;-) | KineticLensman wrote: | If you look after the molehills, the mountains will take care of | themselves. | justin66 wrote: | I would love to know if this guy shares any DNA with the | Wikipedia admin who created tens of thousands of breast-related | pages: | | https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/boobs-tits-wikipedia-tit... | kurthr wrote: | I hope he never has to read a US patent where "comprised of" is | almost a required usage not only in the spec, but in the claims! | It's expected by the examiners and demanded by patent lawyers as | a term of art as interpreted by an appellate court. | | 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. | bombcar wrote: | I dare say you could find some of those 90k changes are to | patent wording on Wikipedia. | kurthr wrote: | It's weird I suppose, but in anything other than a very | formal (legal, medical, scientific, education, marketing?!?) | contexts I find correcting another fluent speaker's english | to be (especially colloquialisms, grammar, and word choice) | just wrong. You can add context to it, but not really | correct. | | 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. | plaguepilled wrote: | >"Many people appreciate the work" | | 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). | BuyMyBitcoins wrote: | Going a step further, this person should know that those are | weasel words and are very much frowned upon. [citation needed]? | zsz wrote: | ..."irregardless," anyone? :-) | graboidhunter wrote: | It is interesting that the account hasn't been flagged as a | "single purpose account." I had an account in the past. I made | two edits before people who disagreed with my edits started | screaming WP:SPA[0]. It really soured my interest in | contributing. | | 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Single- | purpose_accou... | starkparker wrote: | Wikipedia rules and policies are wielded as weapons more than | they're used for their intent, or even as they're written. This | account hasn't been flagged because more people defend it than | attack it. | dopa42365 wrote: | For all intents and purposes, that doesn't really affect the | wikipedia articles in any way, pointless to argue about it. Not | going to read that wall of text about phrasing, but I assume | there's a good enough reason (no strong opinion either 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). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style | stainablesteel wrote: | the internet needs a kids table | | people over 35 shouldn't need to deal with petty shit like this | [deleted] | irthomasthomas wrote: | Now please do same for "factoid". The recent inversion of the | definition of factoid is a much bigger problem. The term | originates from medical science and means "a FALSE fact that is | believed to be true after appearing in print". But some | journalists miss understood it to mean "a small, but TRUE fact." | Their new definition was false, but is now believed to be true | after appearing in print. | | 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. | crazygringo wrote: | You're incorrect about the origin. According to Merriam-Webster | [1]: | | > _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! | | [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid | srcreigh wrote: | "Fact" related words have always had a divergence. Latin factum | verb means to do. Various words fall on the objective aspect of | action (fact, factual) while others fall on the more subjective | "artificial" aspect (factitious, factoid) | | The family of the word "act" has similar divergence from | similar Latin word actus | in_being_the wrote: | A true fact is as capable of "resembling a fact" as a false | one. | b800h wrote: | This reminds me of that Dutch guy who has managed to father more | than 500 children by sperm donation. Unhealthy and obsessive. | | 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. | 000ooo000 wrote: | So if most readers are not really confused by the incorrect usage | ("comprised of") and they understand roughly what is being said | through context, and no readers learn the correct usage of | "comprised" because this editor is simply erasing it.. then what | is actually being achieved here? If the editor were correcting | the bad usages then I would likely consider this a service to the | public but as it stands they're just perpetuating ignorance. In | any case though, I think I agree with those calling this a waste | of time, time that I think would be far better spent reworking | articles for https://simple.wikipedia.org/. | netsharc wrote: | "I upgraded my breaks and my car slows down a lot better now.". | | Spot any mistakes? Do you understand what I mean in context | anyway? So is it fine to use "breaks" when I mean "brakes"? | yCombLinks wrote: | The problem with your sentence is you are simply misspelling | what a person said. The comprise example, they are actually | saying comprise. It is a different word! | 000ooo000 wrote: | Yes I understand; no it is obviously not "fine". I'm not sure | what your point is, because I'm not saying to leave "breaks" | there. My POV is that changing your sentence to | | >"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. | rossriley wrote: | When you see good language use in writing it communicates | its own sense of quality. This differentiates low-value | sources where some people communicate without an | appreciation of the minutiae of the language. | | 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. | scotty79 wrote: | I really see this as clear improvement. Comprised of is | unnecessarily fuzzy word. It might be fine for native speakers | who have fond memories of their grandmas using this word but for | non-native speaker it is just obtuse. | qubex wrote: | I'm impressed. | shadowtree wrote: | Mental health is a spectrum, it is good this specific persona | found an outlet that causes zero harm to himself or others. | | Profile of him: https://medium.com/backchannel/meet-the-ultimate- | wikignome-1... | | Interesting comments around social on this specific persona - the | literal grammar nazi. | wdr1 wrote: | The interesting thing about the English language is that once 50% | of the popular starts to use a word or phrase incorrectly, they | become correct. | pelorat wrote: | I'm not native English speaker, but 90% of my communication | happens in English. I've spoken it for more than 30 years but I | don't think I've ever had a use for the word "comprised". I do | however write the word "composed" a lot since I'm a programmer by | profession. I also read a lot of books (in English) and I don't | think I've come across it there either. I guess I approve. | alvah wrote: | Not all heroes wear capes. | | "draws" instead of "drawers", "brought" instead of "bought", | "aircrafts", "softwares", and "could care less" can also DIAGF. | DonHopkins wrote: | Speaking of heroes who I could care less about: | | 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: | | https://vimeo.com/101810947 | | >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 | | https://vimeo.com/103615214 | | >"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." | linker3000 wrote: | You're on your way to a big of a list. | jzb wrote: | This is one of those issues where I have strong feelings that are | in deep conflict. I agree that grammar / usage pedantry can be | bad in many ways, that language evolves and you have to accept | that. | | 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. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | This definitely falls deep into the pedantry zone. Lots of modern | English usage was once wrong and has become normalized. The | language doesn't have an Academie calling the shots. It | inevitably evolves, warts and all. | housemusicfan wrote: | No one seems to understand Wikipedia operates as a system of | lords and serfs, where a powerful few pull this crap _all the | time_. | | 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. | stOneskull wrote: | they don't even have to pay their winston smiths to work | George83728 wrote: | I'll never understand people who are sticklers for | 'correctly' using some corporation's trademarks. _" Can you | xerox a copy of that for me?"_ _" You know, our photocopy | machine is made by HP and the Xerox corporation doesn't like | when people genericize their..."_ Why the hell do they care | on the corporations behalf? If you aren't being paid by that | corp to care.. then _why?_ | rvnx wrote: | "Can you xerox for me, or can you IBM my software" ? | | Never heard of such, I understand why they get upset if | someone sprinkle the sentences with ads. | dotnet00 wrote: | "xerox" is a pretty common term for photocopy | (particularly in Asia), just as "google" is a pretty | common term for looking something up on the internet. | George83728 wrote: | I'm not talking about people who are unfamiliar with the | term xerox, meaning 'photocopy' (which has been in use | this way for decades.) I'm talking about people who | object to the use of this term because the Xerox company | hates it (they could in principle lose their trademark | because of it, but that's not my problem.) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Trademark | detaro wrote: | _Legos_ is another one of those which I never got why | people were so insistent on quoting the corporate | statements on it so vehemently. | erikerikson wrote: | See also Kleenex | cronix wrote: | And for that, you can just "google it" | arrowsmith wrote: | The classic British example is "hoover". | sholladay wrote: | There are probably hundreds of articles that mention macOS. | What are you suggesting that they do, edit them all | individually by hand? That could take months. If more than | half of the instances deserve to be updated, then replace all | saves time. You can always check the diff and undo any | damage. | prepend wrote: | I think it's a balance based on harm of not changing vs | harm if changing incorrectly. | | 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. | sametmax wrote: | I think lagging behind is better than a wrong correction. | tgv wrote: | I think you've (inadvertently) pointed out a serious | weakness in Wikipedia's editorial process. | DonHopkins wrote: | That's not nearly as irresponsible and illegal as editing a | weather map with a Sharpie to reflect a fictitious future | natural disaster and cover up lying in a tweet. | | 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 SS 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, SS 330016(1)(G), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. | 2147.) | Dylan16807 wrote: | You win the non-sequitur of the day award. | devnullbrain wrote: | Evolution isn't unidirectional. English reached what it is | today not only through the influence of people using words with | new meanings but also with the force of people mandating style, | taste and opinion. You wouldn't use 'normalized' if it wasn't | for Noah Webster calling the shots. | | Moralising about caring about style is itself prescriptivism. | rbirkby wrote: | Is the abomination that is "I'll revert on that" a wart? | nicklaf wrote: | Pedantic, perhaps, but within the purview of an editor of an | encyclopedia enforcing a style guideline! | chx wrote: | Except there is no such thing. To quote. | | > 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. | tasuki wrote: | They're trying to influence the English language for sure. | Who are you to say they're punching above their weight? | prepend wrote: | They're enforcing a style that's not in a work's style | guide. | | 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." | denton-scratch wrote: | > A more at weight pedant would work on changing the | style guide. | | 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. | prepend wrote: | I agree that there are rules. I think the subject in this | article is not following the rules. | nicklaf wrote: | Hmm, I suppose I'm inclined to agree with you here. | | 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. | 0_____0 wrote: | I mean it's their time, if they want to do something useless | but harmless, why not? Unless this is their first step in a | grand scheme to halt the evolution of language, I don't see a | problem here. | eru wrote: | And even if there was an Academie, what authority would they | have? | | Eg the French have one, but that doesn't mean they have any | moral authority. | eastbound wrote: | Since the topic is "who defines English", it's useful to list | our experiences with Academie Francaise. | | - 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 Academie, in 1980, was Marguerite | Yourcenar, and she probably was the most non-feminist woman | they could choose. | | - Recently they opposed the "francais.e.s" style of writing, | sticking to the classic "francais(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 Academie 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 | Academie Francaise would be interesting too. | Glawen wrote: | What you call feminist writing has been around in academic | circles for a long time, it really burst out recently with | woke movement. | | I like the idea about Academie, 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. | hashmush wrote: | Sounds like you have an ax to grind. The whole comment | comes of as very dismissive of the feminist movement (which | might be justified, I know nothing about feminism in | France). | | > [..] 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_? | denton-scratch wrote: | > because they used dots | | 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 | "francais.e.s"? | hashmush wrote: | Not really the main point of my comment, but okay. | | Firstly, mapping symbols to sound is arbitrary and based | on convention. | | I don't speak French, but I wouldn't say _francais.e.s_ | is that much worse than _francais(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. | denton-scratch wrote: | I think it's more like "s/he". It's a typographical | notation with no common understanding of how it's | supposed to be pronounced. | ggm wrote: | Moral, no. But they might influence e.g. textbooks and legal | drafting. That ordinateur is not ordinary and l'informatique | isn't always very Informative. Unless I am mistaken both | English words coming in from the French? | arthurcolle wrote: | l'informatique, as a French person, has always failed to | capture my imagination as the same way as Computer Science. | I wish Informatics was what the Anglosphere had selected | because I think it sounds pretty _groovy_ | ggm wrote: | L'academie get to wear cool robes, pretend togas. Did the | French just invent "Les Coupeurs de la Pierre"? Did they | kill la Voiture electrique? | arthurcolle wrote: | I wish I got to wear robes | nwiswell wrote: | What's stopping you? | ggm wrote: | Anyone can play dress up at home. Getting enrobed by the | premier French academic body at $50k per, that's class. | Sorry classe | prmoustache wrote: | Classe. | ggm wrote: | Tony. I still don't understand how Tony came to mean | classe because Tony bennett and Anthony Armstrong Jones | aren't doing it for me. | denton-scratch wrote: | I like the French language; I was once fluent (when I was | 6). | | 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). | slily wrote: | How is that different from any other language? | | 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. | denton-scratch wrote: | I apologise; I routinely discount anything that is in a | language that I can't read, and isn't available in | translation, which means an awful lot of stuff from the | far-east. | | 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. | za3faran wrote: | I'm curious if that's mainly specific to English. As an Arabic | speaker, tremendous care and effort has been taken to preserve | Fusha (formal/High) Arabic throughout the centuries. Language | and conjugation that sounds wrong is often shunned or mocked, | even though it may partially be spoken in day to day speech in | certain contexts. However, the distinction is always there, and | such language will not be accepted in official discourse, let | alone avenues like poetry and literature. | brylie wrote: | I'm still waiting for autocorrect to stop changing "wellbeing" | to "well-being" | gondaloof wrote: | Time to start using Text Replacements. I have: | | - fuck -> fuck | | - duck -> fuck | | Note: I do like ducks but they're generally less common than | fucks. | brookst wrote: | I miss being young. Ducks will far outnumber, eventually. | rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: | I'm not sure whether you're implying old people curse | less or have less sex. | rootw0rm wrote: | maybe old people are just really into ducks? | brookst wrote: | Pretty much all three. | gsinclair wrote: | Sure, but why should people who can't use the language properly | ( _) be an uncontested force in that evolution? | | (_) 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. | tsimionescu wrote: | If it became common usage, yes? If most people make "a | habitual mistake", then by whose authority of it a mistake? | | > 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. | netsharc wrote: | The most fun is reading threads about cars or racing, where | people say "break" when they mean "brake". | | Should we accept "break" to mean deceleration, or as a noun | for the equipment to slow down a vehicle, then? | int_19h wrote: | If the majority of English speakers start using them as | synonyms, then yes, we should accept it as the result of | natural evolution of the language. | | Thing is, it's going to happen either way. The actual | choices are being "the old man yelling at clouds" vs | moving on. | linker3000 wrote: | I'm not sure if you'll win or loose that argument. | rgoulter wrote: | I feel that this is less extreme than using "literally" | to mean "figuratively". | | 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. | tsimionescu wrote: | No one uses "literally" to mean "figuratively". | | 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". | riwsky wrote: | But no one uses 'using "literally" to mean | "figuratively"' to literally mean 'using "literally" to | mean "figuratively"', either. Instead they mean 'using | "literally" in the context of a figurative usage', as you | point out--the censure of which is warranted by its being | a lazy cliche. The augmentation is not generic; the | coincidence is feigned in the service of irony. | emodendroket wrote: | We can rather tidily solve this by saying orthography and | writing systems are artificial methods of representing | the spoken language which have prescriptive rules. | English spelling certainly shows that it's not difficult | to retain many spellings that no longer accurately | reflect the pronunciation of the word, if they ever did | in the first place. On the other hand, preventing | grammatical changes or semantic shift in words over time | is impossible. Nobody's ever managed that (perhaps we | could find some exceptions among languages that are used | in religious or ceremonial contexts primarily and not as | someone's regular means of communication). | denton-scratch wrote: | > if they ever did in the first place | | 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. | tsimionescu wrote: | This is a completely different example, as this is only a | spelling mistake/difference. When these people write | "break", they clearly mean "brake". They are not adding | the meaning of decelerate to the verb that means to tear | into pieces. | | 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. | mock-possum wrote: | I actually think it's close enough that they could be | mistaking the root meaning; think of 'break' in terms of | elemental forces - a windbreak, a breakwater, a firebreak | - think of how 'taking a break' is slowing down, is | decelerating, is 'braking.' Breaks slow the movement of | energy through a medium. Brake is a pretty easy mistake | to make if you're not sure which is which. | stOneskull wrote: | the meaning of "begs the question" has changed in this way. | it's just about always used "incorrectly" now. | casey2 wrote: | What about it is objectively wrong? Semantics? There are | plenty of words that contain 'of' in the definition, yet are | used with of "Because of" being the primary example, and | afaict is allowed on Wikipedia. Grammar? "Possessed of" | "descended from" etc. This is also very common. | riwsky wrote: | 'Of' is not itself the problem. The problem is that the | direction has flipped from the original usage. It's like if | instead of "my book collection includes all the classics of | Russian literature" people started saying "my book | collection is included by all the classics of Russian | literature" | rgoulter wrote: | > If we can't say that "comprised of" is objectively wrong, | then what _can_ we say about English? | | 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. | emodendroket wrote: | You would think it would be relatively uncontroversial to | anyone who's read an older text full of "thous" and "yes" | that sometimes the way English is used changes over time. | | That said, I think McWhorter's observation that much | fulminating over language usage is sublimated classism is | an astute one. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > 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. | emodendroket wrote: | I don't agree. They may not be conscious of it but the | target here is people who didn't have the "right" | education letting them know to avoid this phrase. | alpaca128 wrote: | > why should people who can't use the language properly () be | an uncontested force in that evolution? | | 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. | christkv wrote: | Do you take or make a decision ;) | emodendroket wrote: | > () If we can't say that "comprised of" is objectively | wrong, then what _can_ we say about English? | | 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. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | I accept his argument but it is tilting at windmills. Is it | valid to engage in mass erasure of a historical record to | suit outmoded ideas? The issue here is that an existing word | has acquired a new usage and the old guard isn't happy with | the change. There was once much grousing about youths failing | to properly conjugate second person pronouns. Now it's | anachronistic to use them. | emodendroket wrote: | "You" is still around so we do still have second-person | pronouns. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Used "incorrectly" in place of thee, thou, and thy in | familiar speech. | emodendroket wrote: | Yes, I know, but we are not without second-person | pronouns at all; we just no longer have separate singular | and plural ones. | bombcar wrote: | Y'all is coming so you best be ready for the second | person plural. | emodendroket wrote: | The long "S" was typically not used as the first letter, as I | recall, but only mid-word. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | I guess the use of the long s here was intentional, in which | case, funny. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Lots of modern English usage was once wrong | | Get back to me when you can type the traditional ct ligature. | ;D | gbromios wrote: | I am personally a rabid descriptivist, but I still find myself | somehow sympathetic to this editor's cause. Much like | "literally", losing the "official" meaning of "comprise" would | leave us (i.e. English speakers) without a word which uniquely | captures that meaning. | | 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. | starkparker wrote: | It's wild that this editor has edited this out of everything but | the Wikipedia Manual of Style: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?fulltext=Search... | cookiengineer wrote: | This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in | Germany. | | 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... | egeozcan wrote: | We still have Turk Dil Kurumu (Institute of Turkish Language) | in Turkey. In their website, their motto is declared as "Our | Language is our Identity" (Dilimiz Kimligimizdir). They | proposed so many silly words, at one point people were coming | up with fake translations attributed to them and others were | believing in those, turning them to urban legends. One such | legend is my favorite: | | Turkish word: Tren (Train) | | Supposedly proposed translation: Alttan ittirmeli ustten | tutturmeli cok oturgacli getirgecli goturgec | | 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'ecole" 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. | | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory | lm28469 wrote: | > My best attempt, perhaps GPTs can do better | | I doubt it's been trained on that, here is what it told me: | | > I'm sorry, but the phrase "Alttan ittirmeli ustten | tutturmeli cok oturgacli getirgecli goturgec" appears to be a | nonsensical combination of Turkish words. It doesn't have a | clear meaning or context. | egeozcan wrote: | I had more luck! :) | | > _try a literal translation for "Alttan ittirmeli ustten | tutturmeli cok oturgacli getirgecli goturgec"_ | | >> 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 :) | croisillon wrote: | you seem to be the first result with | "Nagelindiewandschlageisen" in Google (and i guess i'll now be | second) | cookiengineer wrote: | The issue with our digital library is that the search there | is not indexed, and most old German texts are not searchable | either [1] | | 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... | | [4] https://katalog.slub-dresden.de/id/0-130149888 | everybodyknows wrote: | > ... find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the | nationalistic awareness with all its perks. | | > 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. | hansworst wrote: | I guess these were the only people to deserve the term "grammar | nazi" then | za3faran wrote: | Just because there was an incident involving an extremist | group, does not make the whole thing wrong or incorrect. | | 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. | [deleted] | adjav wrote: | That's like saying Classical Latin has been meticulously | preserved. Technically true, but entirely irrelevant. | v-erne wrote: | I'm rereading Orwell's 1984 and this all seems a bit like | Ministry of Truth and its whole newspeak ordeal (of course MT | was a bit more absurd - they wanted to get rid of all ambiguity | in language also). | | I wonder if this was maybe Orwell inspiration? | cookiengineer wrote: | The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 years... | so I guess nope ;D | | 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. | v-erne wrote: | >> The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 | years... so I guess nope ;D | | 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). | zowie_vd wrote: | The inspiration for Newspeak is Basic English, which is much | like Esperanto but with English words (at least it's | described as such -- I'm not actually very familiar with | Basic English myself). Constructed languages had some avid | supporters back in the early 20th century, looking to make | some constructed language _the_ international language. | Though I don 't know much about Basic English, the unique | looks of Newspeak definitely come, directly or indirectly, | from Esperanto's ideas for keeping the vocabulary small and | simple. To illustrate, in Esperanto the word for "good" is | "bona", "bad" is "malbona" ("ungood"), and "to improve" is | "plibonigi" ("to moregoodify"). | v-erne wrote: | I was wondering more about why he put newspeak in 1984 as a | way for party to controll people minds and eliminate | "though crimes". I do not know history of Basic English and | Esperanto but it seems very improbable that their creators | were aiming at the same goals as Ministry of Truth. | sandworm101 wrote: | If we are going to crack down on style, there are far bigger fish | needing a fry. I hate how common passive voice has become, but | I'm not going on an edit crusade to eliminate needless uses. | tpmx wrote: | https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392568604/dont-you-dare-use-c... | | _Every time we avoid saying "comprised of," the pedants win._ | jdougan wrote: | Time to use more "comprised of" in wikipedia. | cout wrote: | I love how the last sentence in the article begins with the | word "But". Brilliant. | nmca wrote: | caring about grammar is a mug's game, always has been and always | will be. | ychompinator wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | xyst wrote: | I'm just glad this person is using a program he built to find | articles using this specific phrase. | mihaic wrote: | It was all dumb pedantry until the point where the editor talked | about removing instances of "comprised of" inside quotes. | | 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. | rossriley wrote: | The correct way to do this in most style guides is to add (sic) | to the quote which means you're aware of the incorrect use but | are quoting directly. | rvnx wrote: | It's not incorrect use. | | 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. | kstrauser wrote: | Doing God's work, fella. This is also a pet peeve of mine. | readthenotes1 wrote: | Your peeve is comprised of people using a word to mean two | opposite meanings, as if to make up for flammable and | inflammable meaning the same? | kstrauser wrote: | Don't make me throw my Strunk & White at you. | kazinator wrote: | Prepositions combine with verbs to form phrasal verbs, and it's | possible for phrasal verbs to have their own semantics that is | removed from the base verb. | | 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. | andrewshadura wrote: | You completely missed the point, which proves the work of this | Wikipedian is very much necessary. | kazinator wrote: | There is pretty much no aspect of this grammar issue that I | didn't already completely understand forty years ago (at | which time I sided with the prescriptivists, my excuse having | been age twelve). | | 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. | crazydoggers wrote: | First of all, he seems like a perfectly happy person, so I'm | assuming saying he's "sad" is attacking him personally because | you don't agree with him.. which is sad. | | 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". | kazinator wrote: | Meaning is not macro replacement. | | 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. | crazydoggers wrote: | If you look up the word "comprised" in multiple | dictionaries they all define it including "consists of", | "composed of", "made up of" etc. So right off the bat your | argument is flawed. Perhaps you would like to define it the | way you did, and perhaps some set of people you converse | with may, but the point of a dictionary is so we can define | words in ways we all agree on so we all understand each | other. | | As we have learned from Godel, 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. | p-e-w wrote: | The justifications given in that essay leave a really bad taste | in my mouth: | | > I believe using "comprised of" is poor writing, because | | > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say | what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the | language. | | That's true for many, many other words. In fact, most instances | of definite and indefinite articles "add nothing to the | language", since the actual information is in the noun. Just | leave them out, right? "I go house." | | > It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. | | "To comprise" and "to be comprised of" _contain_ the same word, | but not in the same sense. | | > The etymology of the word does not support "comprised of". | | That's irrelevant to the current meaning of the word. This is | called an "etymological fallacy"[1]. | | > It's new. Many current Wikipedia readers were taught to write | at a time when not one respectable dictionary endorsed "comprised | of" in any way. It was barely ever used before 1970. | | Good luck reading Wikipedia, or any newspaper article, if you are | uncomfortable with language coined during the past half-century. | What exactly is that "Internet" thing people keep talking about? | Note that "The _Cambridge Advanced Learner 's Dictionary_, | _Collins English Dictionary_ and the _Oxford Dictionaries_ regard | the form _comprised of_ as standard English usage. "[2] | | The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised of', | and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even | though the term has been part of standard contemporary English | for a long time." | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprised_of | soraminazuki wrote: | > > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to | say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to | the language. | | I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its | ideas. In the novel, the totalitarian state of Oceania uses | that exact same justification to promote the use of the | Newspeak language: | | > After all, what justification is there for a word which is | simply the opposite of some other word? ... Take 'good', for | instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there | for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, | because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak | samirillian wrote: | I don't agree with your 1984 analogy at all. | | 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. | soraminazuki wrote: | > your position is much closer to the Newspeak ethos | | 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. | giraffe_lady wrote: | hey qq who decides what correct is | hgsgm wrote: | The marketplace of ideas. | samirillian wrote: | Well this guy on Wikipedia, who clearly cares more then | you do, for one. Dictionaries, style guides, people like | Orwell, the French do have a ministry to maintain the | language. | | 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. | tonnydourado wrote: | I don't think anyone is saying that "anything goes" and | there's no right or wrong ways of writing, they're just | arguing that your narrow definition of "correct" is too | narrow to be useful for anything other than gatekeeping. | samirillian wrote: | My main point is only that comparing this to newspeak is | totally backwards. | giraffe_lady wrote: | How _does_ wikipedia work? How does language work? | Linguists have firmly determined that it does _not_ work | by a coterie of elites handing down decisions about | correctness, regardless of what france pretends their | "immortels" do. | | 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. | samirillian wrote: | You literally didn't answer my one question, yet you keep | asking more. Even Socrates answered questions when asked. | | I could engage your other points, but why bother | giraffe_lady wrote: | You want me to answer questions like "how do we make | judgements about things?" I don't think this is that sort | of venue sorry. | samirillian wrote: | Okay now you're just trolling me. The question that | starts with "I have a question for you." Did you look at | the Orwell link. | | > 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. | giraffe_lady wrote: | Oh I think you're talking to two different people here, | sorry. I never mentioned orwell. | logicchains wrote: | >I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied | its ideas | | Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For | instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is | "notright". | robswc wrote: | I can get behind the "notlight" but "notright"... feels | like something my brain would never get used to haha. | Izkata wrote: | Because based on the words it's composed of, it's | different from "left" - it would include "forward" and | "backward". | | Similarly for "notlight" implying including twilight, | which "dark" does not. | robocat wrote: | > twilight | | Perhaps that is lightandnotlight. We almost have notlight | in English: unlit. An unlit room feels twilighty to me. | | > notright | | Left in Esperanto: maldekstra | | I can't imagine why a language designer would choose | "mal" as the prefix for "not". In English and Spanish | (two common languages), mal has some bad connotations | (malodour, malady, malfeasance, malo, malformed). Let's | try the opposite: "not left" is definitely something | different from "right" - urrrgggh. "Do not go left" | doesn't mean to go right. | | However it looks like Esperanto also has "liva". Turnu | liven tuj post la angulo ~= Turn left immediately after | the corner. | Izkata wrote: | > 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). | | Well, there's also the Latin word "sinister" which has a | very different meaning in English... Kinda seems like a | common theme. | robocat wrote: | Literally see maladroit | coding123 wrote: | No one is going to fight this person trying to erase a word | though. | ttiurani wrote: | > I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even | though the term has been part of standard contemporary English | for a long time. | | At least I, as a non-native speaker, find the edited sentences | always easier to read. They simply make the text better. | | As the entire point od Wikipedia is to make knowledge | accessible with co-writing, I find it just wild that people | would object to better language. | | So who exactly is imposing their preference on the world: the | one making the text easier to read, or the one objecting to the | edits? | tysam_and wrote: | I find this to be a false equivalence. | | People can horribly misuse the phrase "comprised of". Bland | articles that directly communicate the language can be more | or less tasteful depending upon who is reading them. Almost | assuredly sentences can be written without "comprised of" | that are also definitely not bland. | | But classifying something you find easier to read as better | language for everyone doesn't make it immediately true for | everyone. | | Additionally, it's not about a person making text easier to | read or not from one (or multiple peoples') perspectives -- | this appears to be about someone going on a stylistic crusade | en masse. Objecting to the edits being an act of 'imposing | their preference on the world' feels similar to the political | mirror-projection kind of argument that can happen. | | I think there is interesting discussion to be had (is it | better? are there good ways to use it? when/where/how? what | is the ethicality of editing articles like this? is a | disclaimer wiki entry enough? etc etc), and maybe we can | focus on that. | denton-scratch wrote: | > People can horribly misuse the phrase "comprised of". | | 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". | skupig wrote: | Correct according to whom? The language you speak is the | result of thousands of years of casual communication by | billions of human beings. Precriptivism of a living | natural language is hubris. | | What seems like perfect English to you is not perfect to | everyone. | denton-scratch wrote: | > The language you speak is the result of thousands of | years of casual communication by billions of human | beings. | | 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. | [deleted] | fatfingerd wrote: | I can't see how eliminating a common misuse of an otherwise | dead word wouldn't be clearer to nonnative speakers and | less painful to the brains of native speakers. There are a | lot of people who want to add dead vocabulary back to sound | important and they'll succeed often enough with words that | are at best unnecessary synonyms that convey no additional | information. We don't really have to give them the benefit | of the doubt when they do it completely wrong. | lal wrote: | This conversation has gone back in a circle though. The | original parent comment here pointed out that none of the | arguments given for why it's a "misuse" hold water. "I | can't see how eliminating a common misuse wouldn't be | clearer" is not a responsive reply to "it's not a | misuse." | fatfingerd wrote: | I thought the article was clear enough. Comprises with no | preposition matches its first and uncontested use. The | preposition form is using the second more debatable form | to create the first in a way that implies ignorance or | wordiness any editor should correct. | hhjinks wrote: | Simplifying the language, so that non-native speakers can | understand it, doesn't _automatically_ make the text better. | That 's a wild assertion. Worse yet, Simple English Wikipedia | exists for that exact purpose. | lolinder wrote: | With all due respect, if you're not a native English speaker | you really aren't in a position to judge what constitutes | "better language". I speak fluent Spanish but I wouldn't | presume to correct a native Spanish speaker on their style. | | 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. | yellowapple wrote: | With all due respect, I _am_ a native English speaker and I | agree with the GP. I wouldn 't go as far as the Wikipedian | in question (I surely have far better uses of my time than | to make many tens of thousands of edits over a trivial | nitpick), but the end result does read better and I'd have | a hard time justifying a reversion of such an edit. | | 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. | justin66 wrote: | > but the end result does read better | | What tiny fraction of one percent of the edits would you | estimate you have actually read? | eynsham wrote: | It's not obvious to me that only native speakers should | have the right to pronounce on linguistic changes or the | aptness of linguistic use. Some possible arguments, and | responses: | | 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. | capableweb wrote: | > With all due respect, if you're not a native English | speaker you really aren't in a position to judge what | constitutes "better language" | | 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. | haswell wrote: | > _But all of this is highly subjective in the end, so | everyone 's opinion is equally worth, native speaker or | not._ | | 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. | lolinder wrote: | I was responding to this: | | > 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=%22comprise | d+o... | Macha wrote: | > 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 | | 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/ | devnullbrain wrote: | >Note that "The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, | Collins English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionaries regard | the form comprised of as standard English usage." | | I've never found this a convincing argument. Think of when you | use a dictionary: it's because you want to understand a word | that you don't understand in its context. If it didn't include | all uses, the dictionary wouldn't help you. A dictionary a tool | to help consume language. | | If you want help to _produce_ language, you refer to a style | guide. The barrier for acceptability is much higher there. | pbreit wrote: | I read this and googled a bit and don't quite understand what | the problem is with "comprised of". | | The author says this "The 9th district is comprised of all of | Centerville" should be replaced by "The 9th district comprises | all of Centerville"? That's it? | | Is there some way to see what edits were made? | Bud wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | sgustard wrote: | The most relevant argument is: this is an encyclopedia, its | very purpose is to be precise. And words like "comprise" are | specifically about defining the meaning and composition of | terms. If the encyclopedia is sloppy with words why does it | even exist? | | Another point: the era of a human doing rote language cleanup | is nearly over; surely an LLM can do better? | notatoad wrote: | you're right that the essay is poorly argued. it all amounts to | a whole lot of words saying basically "i don't like it" and | trying to claim opinions as fact. | | but also, i agree. i don't like it either. so i'm not sure the | whole essay is necessary, but i appreciate the work this person | is doing to remove the bad writing from wikipedia. | morsch wrote: | Articles obviously add information: is it a specific, known | house you are going to ( _I 'm going to the house_) or a non- | specific/not previously referred to ( _I 'm going to a house_)? | | When it's your own house you're going to, you could argue the | definite article wouldn't add anything, and the phrasal verb | _to go home_ drops it (ie. _I 'm going home_), though adding an | article is possible and changes the meaning ( _I 'm going to | the/a home_, in the context of a home for the elderly or some | such). | [deleted] | emodendroket wrote: | I would leave the argument but tweak the example given to | support: it "adds nothing to the language" that we have many | more or less perfectly synonymous terms, such as | purse/handbag, pop/soda, and so on. | regularfry wrote: | They're regional though. "Purse" and "handbag" don't have | the same meaning in the UK, and "pop" and "soda" are rare | in their US meaning. | | In this case "compose" and "comprise" do have different | meanings. "Compose" has the sense of "put together" whereas | "comprise" is closer to "contain". You'd never say | "contained of" unless you were going for a really archaic | sentence construction. I think it's less clear that | "comprised of" is incorrect in all cases, but I do agree it | sounds ugly and that there's almost always going to be a | better phrasing available. | emodendroket wrote: | Wikipedia themselves maintain a page about "comprised of" | that has citations going back to the 18th Century. I | think it has been long enough to concede that it has the | supposedly objectionable meaning. | 112233 wrote: | This statement is true only if it is not possible to tell | from the context if the noun refers to a specific/previously | mentioned thing or not. It would be possible to measure the | amount of information contained in these articles, Shannon | style, by taking a body of text, removing the articles, and | then asking a bunch of english speakers ( that can possibly | be approximated by a LLM ) to put back in the correct | articles. Any uncertainty or variation would point to | information being lost by the removal. | tysam_and wrote: | I was thinking about Shannon entropy as well, as the OP | completely forgets the word 'from' as well! "I go to | house", "I go from house". Certainly, house contains more | information, but the concepts of to and from as some kind | of token do contain meaningful amounts of entropy as well. | morsch wrote: | Human languages are highly redundant, for the most part. | The communication channel is lossy, so you add parity bits | and error correction codes. | denton-scratch wrote: | > is it a specific, known house you are going to | | "I'm going house" contains less meaning than "I'm going to | [a] house". Without the preposition, it could mean "I'm | leaving [a] house" ("I'm going from house"). | ghayes wrote: | > > It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. | | Auto-antonyms are actually quite common in English. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym | two_handfuls wrote: | Parent is still correct about it being illogical though. | jonny_eh wrote: | Interesting. I wonder if the word "presently" could count. It | can mean both "soon" or "currently". | singleshot_ wrote: | That's an arguable factoid. | grammarxcore wrote: | One of my favorites is "nonplussed," because its evolution | into two opposite things is both generational and split | across British vs North American English. | Isinlor wrote: | Slavic languages do perfectly fine without articles. As Polish | speaker I say leave them out ;) . | denton-scratch wrote: | > As Polish speaker I say leave them out | | "As Polish speaker, I say leave out"? | ezekiel68 wrote: | Exactly. You know what else is completely unnecessary? The | Eiffel Tower. Big Ben. The reflecting pool at the Mall in | Washington, DC. Ten million other thngs. That something is | 'completely unnecessary' is a completely insufficient reason to | annihilate it, especially it it has wormed its way into common | experience. | FabHK wrote: | > That's true for many, many other words. | | Well, yes, but other words aren't wrong and irritating to many | readers. The point is that the usage in question has several | disadvantages, but zero redeeming features. | | > "To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, | but not in the same sense. | | That's not the point. "To shoot" and "to be shot" contain the | same word, but mean opposite things, but that's a well | understood result of active vs passive voice, and nobody | objects to that. However, imagine some people would start using | "to be shot" to mean "to shoot". So, they'd say "Peter was shot | by Paul" to mean that Peter shot Paul, that is, Paul was shot | by Peter. And then the dictionary would add that as a secondary | meaning. Can't you see how people might object to that? | mjw_byrne wrote: | There are other common examples of active and passive meaning | the same thing. "The document is printing" and "the document | is being printed", for example. It has no merit other than a | popular consensus that it's correct, which is all that's | required. | 317070 wrote: | Those are just autantonyms, and English has plenty already. | | First you dust the cake, then you dust the table. | | The castle is impregnable. | | And if you add more collocial words, wicked now is good, but | also means bad. When a song is cool, you mean it's hot. | | People tend to not object to that. | lIl-IIIl wrote: | It is objected to in some writing. | | "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. | prepend wrote: | > It is objected to in some writing. | | 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. | denton-scratch wrote: | "Wicked" to mean "good" is slang. So is "cool", used in | that sense. Slang is not encyclopaedic language. | JW_00000 wrote: | I think auto-antonyms should be avoided in an encyclopedia. | (And also in scientific publications, text books, and | laws.) | Jabbles wrote: | <incorrect statement> | brainwad wrote: | It's presumably the adjective for when something can be | impregnated. | Y_Y wrote: | > Your castle is surprised... | | (Ross, Act 4, Scene 3, Macbeth) | ezekiel68 wrote: | There is no legal right "not to be irritated". It is | incorrect to state that this particular case has "no | redeeming features". The fact that the phrase is in common | usage is all the justification it needs. What's next, "Won't | is not a logical contraction of 'will not'"? | hhjinks wrote: | I don't see it. The 50 states comprise the United States. The | United States is comprised of the 50 states. You can change | the word, and the exact same "issues" persist. The 50 states | make up the whole of the United States. The whole of the | United Sates is made up of the 50 states. | denton-scratch wrote: | No - "The United States comprises 50 states". | [deleted] | yellowapple wrote: | Except that, per the article, the "correct" rendering would | be "The United States comprises the 50 states" or "The 50 | states are comprised by the United States" - because the | United States is composed of / contains / includes the 50 | states. Therein lies the issue: the word "comprised" is | being used opposite from its actual meaning. | | 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. | dwringer wrote: | This is the crux of the issue to me - this use of | "comprised of" is a completely logical and consistent usage | whether or not some people think it's wrong. Plenty of | times correct constructions are considered wrong by lots of | people, this is what leads to the phenomenon of | "hypercorrections". I won't argue that this is necessarily | one since the "corrections" don't strike me as better or | worse, but languages are inherently subjective. For this | reason I find it distasteful to go around enforcing | linguistic policies on others. | Gordonjcp wrote: | Peter wasn't shot by Paul, it was John that was shot by Mark, | and the whole Paul thing is a hoax. | mock-possum wrote: | Well sure it'd be unsettling but like... what, are you just | going to stop language from changing? Good luck with that. | We're just along for the ride, if people start using it that | way, then that's what it means now. Objecting to that is | about as much use as to be pissed into the wind. | Nevermark wrote: | If language legitimately changes so a sentence or phrase | has two opposite yet universally used meanings, (presumably | resolved in each instance by context), it would still be | better writing to avoid it when clarity of meaning is | paramount. | | Encyclopedias are a good place to make as few assumptions | and gambles as possible with regard to how a reader might | comprehend what is written. | [deleted] | pclmulqdq wrote: | "Comprises" is frequently used in patent writing, but I have | rarely seen it elsewhere. I think its use, both in patents and | normal English, has a particular connotation, that "is | comprised of" doesn't carry otherwise: | | * When I hear "X comprises Y and Z," I think that the author is | saying that X includes Y and Z as its key parts, but is not | precluding the existence of other parts | | * When I hear "X is comprised of Y and Z," I think Y and Z are | the only parts of X | | This might have originally been a misuse of the word "comprise" | to mean "compose," but I feel like that's a pretty big | distinction in meaning. | kevinpet wrote: | Forgive me if I decline to take writing advice from someone who | tells me "I go house" is meaningful English. It isn't. It's | violates the rules of grammar, rules which are a description of | the normal English as used by members of the English speaking | community. English expects you to specify whether you go into, | towards, around, out of, or through the window of a house, or | the house that we already know we are talking about, or Joe's | house. | inimino wrote: | "impose my preference on everyone else" | | By fixing a common mistake on a collaboratively edited | encyclopedia? What are you even talking about? Do you have any | idea what an editor does at the New York Times? | prepend wrote: | But it's not a mistake to everyone, it's just a mistake in | this person and some others eyes. | | But it's an accepted usage of the words. | | I'm not exactly familiar with specific editorial duties, but | it seems NYTimes editors allow "comprised of" [0] so they | don't seem to correct all occurrences of "comprised of" by | changing text to "composed of." | | [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comprised+of%22+site%3 | Any... | inimino wrote: | Yes it's a mistake exactly in the eyes of those who know | the meaning of the word. "com" + "prise" = "grasp | together". An error can be more common than the correct | usage and still be an error. | | Would you accept "A table setting is included of plate, | fork, knife and spoon." as correct usage? What if | "included" becomes rarely used in the future and this | incorrect usage becomes relatively popular? Would that make | it correct? Nonsense. | | The job of an editor is to raise the level of the writing | before it goes to print, including fixing common mistakes. | A professional writer would just learn something from it | and improve. What I'm amazed by is the number of people who | seem outraged, like someone's right to freedom of | expression is being violated because someone came along | after and removed some mistakes and improved the writing, | literally a Wikipedia editor just doing the job of an | editor. And then a whole essay has to be written justifying | it, and that's still not enough, and we are all discussing | it even further. It's a remarkable phenomenon. | | It makes me wonder if software developers are as defensive | about common programming mistakes. If so we might have a | bit of a problem. | dllthomas wrote: | > "com" + "prise" = "grasp together". | | This is a terrible argument first because etymology is | not meaning, but more importantly because "grasp | together" doesn't seem to rule out the errant meaning. | "This table setting grasps together a plate, a cup, and | several pieces of silverware." seems if anything less | wrong than "A plate, a cup, and several pieces of | flatware grasp together this table setting." | vehemenz wrote: | > Would that make it correct? Nonsense. | | 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. | stOneskull wrote: | > Just leave them out, right? "I go house." | | the ministry of truth is easier to write as minitrue, yeah. | prepend wrote: | It seems like the editor is just fishing for a reason to make | lots of edits and backed into logic so their stuff doesn't get | reverted. | | I love wikis and knowledge bases but this is exactly the kind | of stuff that detracts. | | On one case, who cares what this person does with their time. | | On the other case, it wastes the attention of 90k authors who | need to figure out whether they care and have their writing | style overridden by a rando. | | I think the correct way to do this is to appeal to a writing | style that gets argued over (sometimes perpetually) and when | settled then the 90k edits can be made. This edit would be an | argument presented to change the style guide. | | Since "comprised of" is proper usage I doubt it would be | proscribed in the style guide. | | In my org I used to waste minutes of having writings where | people expressed preferences for "and" vs "&" or Oxford comma | or whether data are plural and edited things back and forth. | Then I just found a style guide and adopted it and ask that | people not revert changes based on preferences that break the | style guide. | klyrs wrote: | > On the other case, it wastes the attention of 90k authors | who need to figure out whether they care and have their | writing style overridden by a rando. | | On the other hand, if you're editing wikipedia and you expect | your writing to not be subject to rando edits, you won't last | long. | oezi wrote: | Rando edits by pedantic a*-hats who don't care about the | actual topic but their weird crusade. /s | lIl-IIIl wrote: | "I go house" is not standard English. When they said 'There are | many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of"' | it is implied that those other ways are standard English. | | >The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised | of', and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, | even though the term has been part of standard contemporary | English for a long time." | | But they are not imposing their preference. They are making an | improvement that has a consensus and the edit is appreciated by | the authors of the text and Wikipedia editors. | | Look at the "Reaction to the project" and the barn star awards | they got. People whose text was edited to remove "comprised of" | thanked this person for their work. Only 1% of the time the | edit was reverted. Their work is overwhelmingly viewed as a | good thing for Wikipedia. | adjav wrote: | There is no "standard English." There sure as hell isn't a | consensus that "comprised of" is incorrect, or it wouldn't | have been used over 90k times. | lIl-IIIl wrote: | It is a consensus reached by the Wikipedia editing | community, or the edits wouldn't be so overwhelmingly | accepted. There are probably more than 90k typos in | Wikipedia that doesn't mean they are correct. | | "Standard English" is a poor choice of words, but I'm not | sure how to describe what "I go house" is. Not | grammatically correct English? | hulitu wrote: | Romanes eunt domum was good enough. /s | VWWHFSfQ wrote: | I suspect that this is an obsessive-compulsive thing. So as | long as they're not making the articles worse then I say just | let them do it if they need to. | tysam_and wrote: | Plus, generally languages are comprised of, among other things, | a hodgepodge of colloquialisms that add flavor to the | discourse. | Bud wrote: | [dead] | bspammer wrote: | Flavor isn't part of the Wikipedia style guide though. The | language used across articles is intentionally conservative | and boring. | dmonitor wrote: | just wait until they learn about the etymology of awful and | awesome. both come from the word awe, but mean completely | opposite things. | ouid wrote: | the justifications in the essay might be poor, but it is | sensible to restrict the language of wikipedia to be as | unambiguous as possible, given its status as "authoritative on | most topics". | | For an example in the other direction, wikipedia should ban the | word inflammable. Its original meaning, which some authors will | definitely prefer (if they are pedants), is entirely the | opposite meaning of the colloquial meaning. Should wikipedia | pick a meaning for the word, which people are free to ignore, | or just outright ban it? (except in etymology wikipedia, where | it is an example of a word, rather than part of the explanatory | grammar) | bee_rider wrote: | I don't love "is comprised of," and think it can usually be | replaced with something like "contains" or simply "is," | resulting in a better, more direct sentence. But I'm not going | to go on a crusade against it. | bombcar wrote: | The alphabet contains five vowels is a completely different | statement from the alphabet is comprised of five vowels. | bee_rider wrote: | Sure, they aren't always one-for-one swaps. | | 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. | redmorphium wrote: | "My itinerary is comprised of four hotel stays." ---> | | "My itinerary is comPOSED of four hotel stays." | | or | | "My itinerary coNSISTS of four hotel stays." | | Much better. | jasomill wrote: | "I'll be staying at four hotels." | Izkata wrote: | Correction: "I'm planning on staying at four hotels, but | there might be more depending on how my trip goes | (because it's not completely 100% planned out)." | | "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). | [deleted] | yellowapple wrote: | "I plan on staying at four hotels.", if you want to more | accurately preserve the original meaning (just because | it's on the itinerary doesn't mean I'll actually be | staying at all four hotels, but it does typically mean | there's a plan I intend to follow). | redmorphium wrote: | It really depends on sentence flow. With the usual SVO | order, the subject becomes the focus. | | If the context or dialogue goes like this: "Where are you | staying for your vacation?" then the logical subject of | the answer should come first, e.g. "I am staying ..." | | However if the lead-in focuses more on the itinerary | rather than the traveler, e.g. | | "What is your plan? Can you describe your itinerary?" | then it makes a lot of sense to start with "My itinerary | involves..." or "My itinerary consists of..." or for a | passive voice, "My itinerary is composed of..." | prepend wrote: | "I'll stay at four hotels." | rvnx wrote: | This. Simple, direct, and much more intelligible. | nhinck2 wrote: | ?? If you say so | croisillon wrote: | i don't know if it's illogical but there are a lot of words | that mean two opposite things: http://www.fun-with- | words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html | riwsky wrote: | > That's irrelevant to the current meaning of the word. This is | called an "etymological fallacy"[1]. | | Did you read your own link? It explicitly calls out absolute | neglect of the etymology as fallacious, as well. | drewcoo wrote: | >> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. | | And to support your stance against that, I offer this: | | https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their... | | They can take "cleave" from my cold, dead hands! | riffraff wrote: | Oh that misses my favorite, "egregiously" which means both | done very well and done exceptionally wrong, the latter used | more commonly, the former archaic. | | But in my language we only use the original positive meaning, | so I was deeply confused by English using it for a long time. | bombcar wrote: | There's a number that change over time; awful and terrible | for example. Very old hymns talk about how awful and | terrible God is, for example. | yellowapple wrote: | I mean, it's accurate either way, at least in the Old | Testament. | emodendroket wrote: | While we're on trivia, the etymology of this word is the | Latin for "leaving the flock." The Japanese word Ba Qun , | meaning "exceptional," has this exact same etymology except | by way of Chinese rather than Latin. | phoenixreader wrote: | I was going to mention "sanction". Happy to learn more words | like that! | zephrx1111 wrote: | Sorry, but as a non-native English speaker, "compromised of" | confuses me more, I guess mostly because I was exposed to the | other meaning too much. | Izkata wrote: | "Compromised" and "comprised" are different words. | _jab wrote: | How many people, I wonder, criticize this user's actions as | pedantic, and yet themselves regularly make use of and appreciate | code formatters like Black, Prettier, or yapf? | | It's the exact same problem. | hgsgm wrote: | This thread is now larger than the content of all those edits. | Good job, team! | AlbertCory wrote: | I'm not saying she's wrong, but: | | 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... | inimino wrote: | Note that this is using the word "comprising" correctly, so is | irrelevant to the topic of the incorrect usage. | AlbertCory wrote: | TBH, I found her article intolerably tedious, so I didn't | study it all. | | I did notice she singled out "comprising of" for abuse, which | it definitely deserves. In a claim you write "comprising" or | "comprised of." | bdowling wrote: | Claim language is very specific: | | 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... | paulcole wrote: | Remember when the Comic Sans creator said, "If you love Comic | Sans you don't know much about typography and you should get a | new hobby. And if you hate Comic Sans you also don't know much | about typography and should get a new hobby. | | This is the grammar equivalent of that. | subroutine wrote: | Funny to see this on the front page of HN. I literally just went | down this rabbit hole an hour ago from twitter. I found this | article to be among the most interesting related commentary... | | https://web.archive.org/web/20150214014338/http://chronicle.... | Nifty3929 wrote: | Mine is "try and" - Please, please stop saying this. It doesn't | make any sense (except in the rare cases that it does, like "try | and fail," unless you really are trying TO fail, in which case it | doesn't) | | 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? | srcreigh wrote: | "Try" is it's own verb, and the x in "try and x" is also a | verb/verb phrase. Read and weep! | a2800276 wrote: | As in: "Will this work?" - "Why don't you try and see?" ? | | 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 | MagicMoonlight wrote: | Just wants a way to pad his score | Gimpei wrote: | Could somebody do the same for "nonplussed"? We have now given | that poor poor word two opposite meanings. Currently, I have no | idea what somebody means when they say they're nonplussed. | crazygringo wrote: | I will say that word is _always_ confusing, perhaps the #1 | example. | | 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. | devnullbrain wrote: | Worse evolving opposite meanings is a real problem. Another | example that became popular this century is 'entitled'. Now it | means both 'being entitled to something' and 'wrongly thinking | you're entitled to something'. So now a word we don't have a | simple alternative for is less useful because it has become | ambiguous. It also retroactively makes past uses ambiguous. | This has a real cost to communication and the remedy is to | enforce style to avoid it happening to other words. | PKop wrote: | Good for him, we should uphold standards and enforce correct | grammar. | xupybd wrote: | Why would someone invest so much energy removing something that | is common as mud, and universally understood? | bruce343434 wrote: | I think the actual article/essay answers that question pretty | well... | [deleted] | Pazzaz wrote: | As a non-native English speaker, I appreciate pedantic editors | like this one a lot. When I read Wikipedia, I want the text to be | easy to understand and consistent with the rest of Wikipedia and | when I edit, I want people to improve what I wrote. I wish | everything I wrote had a copy-editor as pedantic as Wikipedia | power users. | | 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. | | [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism | relaxing wrote: | As a native English speaker let me assure you this user has | done nothing for the understandability or consistency of the | text. | dm319 wrote: | If he's on the side of Fowler's modern English, I'm on his side. | newswasboring wrote: | > Not everyone agrees "comprised of" is wrong, but no one finds | it better than the alternatives. | | Brilliant way to make a decision in a community. I wish more | discussions had room for such thought patterns. | bandyaboot wrote: | > It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. | | Maybe he can tackle "literally" once he is finished with | "comprise". | fknorangesite wrote: | The use of "literally" as an intensifier goes back centuries. | I'm not sure why people act as if it's some kind of new | development. | devnullbrain wrote: | The acceptance of 'literally' to mean 'not literally' means | English now has no simple, consistent way to say something is | literally literal. At least linguistics nerds are happy though! | albert_e wrote: | That's oversight | jmyeet wrote: | The psychology of editors and moderators is fascinating. I see | them as being cast from the same mold as bureaucrats. All of | them, left to their own devices, will invent work and create | obstacles. | | 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. | latency-guy2 wrote: | Intend all the hate you want, they don't care, they will | mandate their world even when it's wrong to do so. | | If hate is what would get them to stop, they'd have quit before | they began. | askin4it wrote: | Yep. Definitely a case of one side half-heartedly | participating and the other side playing for keeps. | | 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. | pcthrowaway wrote: | That whole page is comprised of the most pedantic arguments for | what amounts to policing an evolving language | LesZedCB wrote: | prescriptivists are a real bummer | riwsky wrote: | Or rather: most people in everyday usage would describe | prescriptivists as a real bummer | devnullbrain wrote: | It's not a sports team. If it was, editors, teachers and code | reviewers would be its supporters. I'd prefer not to live in | a world without those. | [deleted] | hota_mazi wrote: | Couldn't it be argued that it's totally okay to have two separate | meanings for "to comprise" as a direct verb (A comprises B), and | mean the opposite when used in indirect form (B is comprised of | A)? | andrewshadura wrote: | The issue here is that comprise means "being composed of". So | instead of "A comprises B and C" people write "A is comprised | of B and C". | fwlr wrote: | "Languages change over time" is often deployed as an argument | against pedantry. I believe pedantry is a useful force (akin to | friction) and it plays a necessary role in the change of language | over time. A language change has proven its worth if it can | spread faster than pedantry can resist it. | [deleted] | kazinator wrote: | > _It 's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things._ | | LOL, can't wait for this person to dedicate their life to fixing | the Japanese wikipedia. | ggm wrote: | Can they be persuaded to invest time in autocorrecing learnings | to lessons and de-verbalating words like "medalled" and | "podiumed" | filmgirlcw wrote: | This essay and this crusade are a perfect embodiment of why no | one takes Wikipedia seriously (even if we all use it as a | starting place for research). | | 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 | passe, but this person really needs to touch grass. | dingledork69 wrote: | > So my actual process involves a program that does the | Wikipedia search (it just fetches the same URL as you fetch | when you type in the Wikipedia search box) and compares the | list to the previously fetched lists. It selects only those | articles that weren't in one of those lists in the previous six | months and generates a web page linking to them, in | alphabetical order. I browse that page and proceed to edit them | in order. I edit about 60 articles a week this way, typically | within a few days of the article being created or edited to | require it. | | Sounds like it barely takes any effort. | PrimeMcFly wrote: | This is one of the bad things about Wikipedia, letting people | with pet peeves or obsessions having so much editorial control. | | Ultimately it's a small price to pay though. | emodendroket wrote: | Probably more insidious that shills working for whatever | bogeyman you'd find most concerning can pull all the same | levers. | DangitBobby wrote: | Is there a way to prevent people from doing petty and unnecessary | vandalism to articles you've authored or are you pretty much at | their mercy? | crote wrote: | You can't, Wikipedia is pretty much entirely pedantry at this | point. | | 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. | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | If the Tweet that you cited was indeed from the official | account of the local fire department, then the editor who | reverted you was wrong. Twitter accounts are mostly | unreliable sources, except when they are reliable: that is, | when an official or verified account gives information about | themselves. See WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:SPS. The same goes for | any such social media platform: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, | whatever. | | 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? | bombcar wrote: | It is absolutely pointless to bother contributing to | Wikipedia. Either it's so notable someone else will do it, or | you'll get steamrolled by some out of control editor. | joecool1029 wrote: | Wikipedia often purges things with no rhyme or reason. See the | vandalism of the Sony Exmor article because one of one editor | deciding arbitrarily that it needed a good content cleansing: | | 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... | Ekaros wrote: | I hope they start to kill lists in general. Like for example | listing details of countries. Clearly those are not | encyclopaedic and do not belong into Wikipedia by their | standards... | jl6 wrote: | The cleansed version actually looks like an encyclopedia | article, whereas the original just looks like a data dump. | everybodyknows wrote: | Garner's English Usage, 2016 edition, page 191: | | > 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 | ... | denton-scratch wrote: | "Comprises" means "consists of". So "comprised of" means | "consists of of". It's not just that some people dislike it; it's | simply wrong. | | 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. | dheera wrote: | I think people mean to say "composed of" but then they change | it to "comprised" because it sounds more high-class and elite. | mmcnl wrote: | What is "WP"? | js2 wrote: | Wikipedia | kaetemi wrote: | Wifi Port. | kaetemi wrote: | It's the port in your Wifi over Data box, that hackers can | connect their wireless Wifi cable extender to, so you can | consummate all the exoteric phonography that the | information highway is compromised of. | coding123 wrote: | Word perfect or word press | ddoolin wrote: | WordPress. | | Wickedly Pernicious. | moritzwarhier wrote: | AAC. | | 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: | denton-scratch wrote: | WP for "Wikipedia" is built into the site; most of the | internal guidance pages can be accessed via titles such as | "WP:WikiProject". | | [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. | moritzwarhier wrote: | Thanks for the clarification. I wouldn't argue against | abbreviations per se. Was just in the mood for a whimsy | post. | | 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. | UncleMeat wrote: | "Yeah no" and "No yeah" mean clear and different things, | despite being superficially total nonsense. I've probably heard | "comprised of" thousands of times in my life to mean "made of." | What's wrong with phrases having meaning? | panxyh wrote: | Yeah no, they are not _total_ nonsense. | UncleMeat wrote: | That's my point. If you just look at phrases as meaning the | sum of their words then this phrase makes no sense. But it | _is_ a phrase that has an understood meaning. | bombcar wrote: | Comprises is not comprised. | lolinder wrote: | > It's not just that some people dislike it; it's simply wrong. | | 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... | s1artibartfast wrote: | Semantic shift is certainly a phenomenon, but that doesn't | mean that it should always be embraced or is useful. There's | a clear use for unambiguous and Technical language. | | 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 | lolinder wrote: | I'm fine with people being careful in their usage in | contexts where precision matters. I even agree that | Wikipedia is probably one of those places. | | 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. | Retric wrote: | Semantic drift means it is no longer the wrong word. | s1artibartfast wrote: | What do you call the intermediate stage where half of | people have one definition and other half have a | different one? | nitwit005 wrote: | That's the period where teachers tell millions of | students that "can I" is wrong, you should say "may I". | | 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. | [deleted] | sebzim4500 wrote: | In this case, history. | s1artibartfast wrote: | As my parent post points out, it is certainly not history | in the legal system and other fields where precise and | Technical meanings matter. | Retric wrote: | That only applies in cases of ambiguity at which point | it's often best to avoid both the old and new | definitions. | s1artibartfast wrote: | I generally agree with that sentiment. And something like | a patent the definition is well understood. | | 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. | kaetemi wrote: | Wait until it drifts off further into "it is compromised of". | (You can Google that, and you'll find it used in papers | already.) | smcl wrote: | I don't know if it's that simple, and in the case of | "comprised of" I think there's good reason to attempt to make | a correction. It's not that _to comprise_ is some super | common, popular verb that pops up naturally in our day-to-day | language. It 's relatively rare. My personal opinion is that | people believe what they'd probably say normally ("x is made | up of y", or "x contains ys" or whatever) sounds too simple | in some contexts, so they reach for the the verb they heard | some other people use that they presume is _more_ correct and | then use it incorrectly. People are conflict-averse and don | 't often correct their friends/colleagues/clients/whatever so | it sticks around. So if the intent is to use a _more correct_ | word, surely people would want to know the _actually_ correct | way it 's used? | | 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. | groestl wrote: | > Words frequently develop the opposite meaning of what they | originally had | | 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). | sunir wrote: | Well, that's not much of a value argument, just a statement | of reality that entropy exists and everything becomes crap | over time without maintenance. | | Gardens also grow. But if you don't maintain your garden, | they _ahem_ literally become weeded, _cough_ figuratively | speaking. | lolinder wrote: | You're welcome to tend your own garden, but until we figure | out how to have fair elections I would invite all self- | appointed language stewards to leave other people's plots | alone. | | Languages belong to their speakers, and the only way we | have to vote at the moment is with our idiolect. | throwawaymaths wrote: | Not entirely. Consists of (without a modifier like "in part") | usually strongly implies completeness or functional | completeness ("active ingredients") in the subsequent list, | comprises is more free to be incomplete. | crazygringo wrote: | > _it 's simply wrong_ | | 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. | denton-scratch wrote: | "ne... pas" in French is nothing more nor less than the | correct way of formulating certain kinds of statements | containing a negative. If you left out either of "ne" or | "pas" in such a construction, people would either laugh, or | assume you were some kind of primitive language generator. | | 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. | PoignardAzur wrote: | "Laugh or assume you're a robot" isn't quite right, though; | skipping the "ne" is common in informal contexts. | JackFr wrote: | There was a fascinating article in the Economist many years | ago about the worldwide predominance of English. (This was | pre ubiquitous internet.) | | The reasons given were 1) British colonialism 2) Post WWII | American hegemony 3) No one cares if you speak it poorly. | monetus wrote: | Ever read pidgin? Mutually intelligible, really neat. | | https://www.bbc.com/pidgin | ghaff wrote: | >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. | crazygringo wrote: | > _It 's absurd that English speakers are so tolerant of | incorrect usage._ | | 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? | vidarh wrote: | Or they'll assume you're a native speaker familiar with a | given dialect or specific idioms. Dropping "ne" is _common_ | in spoken French many places to the point that to many | speakers you 'll sound stilted and/or old if you included | it - the first time I was told (as a teenager) I sounded | "old" for using ne..pas was around 30 years ago. | | 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 | arrowsmith wrote: | > If you left out either of "ne" or "pas" in such a | construction, people would either laugh, or assume you were | some kind of primitive language generator. | | Isn't it common to drop the "ne" in colloquial speech? | umanwizard wrote: | "Common" is an understatement. It's practically | universal. You will sound weird if you systematically | include "ne", like you learned to speak by reading books | and have never communicated with a real person. | umanwizard wrote: | > If you left out either of "ne" or "pas" in such a | construction, people would either laugh, or assume you were | some kind of primitive language generator. | | You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. | Please learn French before spouting off so confidently | about it. | gnulinux wrote: | I know this is shocking to people but if a phrase is | systematically used by native speakers, it is then part of the | language. There is no notion of native speakers being | systematically wrong in linguistics. It wouldn't make sense | scientifically. | | 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. | jerry1979 wrote: | Who are the native speakers in the case of Wikipedia? | neltnerb wrote: | I think you have the crux of it... this person has a very | long essay explaining why this change makes it more | comprehensible to more readers. | | 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. | philwelch wrote: | u are looking at this from the pov of a linguist, not an | editor...u might think this comment im writing isnt | "systematically wrong" or whatever but u wouldn't write a | wikipedia article this way | | seriously tho if descriptivists had the courage of their | convictions they would just stop capitalizing, there's no | reason to | matteoraso wrote: | >Languages simply are the way they are. | | 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. | fknorangesite wrote: | > There are authoritative guides on English (e.g. the | Webster dictionary) | | 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). | JW_00000 wrote: | OK, but does that mean the phrase should be used as such in | an encyclopedia? | | 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. | zoklet-enjoyer wrote: | I only ever thought biweekly was synonymous with | fortnightly | bbor wrote: | Does "utilize" really lead to such ambiguities? Or | "comprised of"? I'd be really surprised... maybe in rare | cases? I haven't read the entire linked manifesto so maybe | he has some examples! | ghaff wrote: | Biweekly (and probably semi-weekly) is one of those words | that should be generally avoided. It's like depending on | some less obvious operator precedence rule rather than | parentheses. You may be technically correct, but you | shouldn't do it that way because others will misunderstand | you. | | 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. | crazygringo wrote: | But there's nothing ambiguous about "is comprised of", so | what's the problem? | emberfiend wrote: | Your example doesn't map, though. There is no ambiguity | when I say "curry is comprised of beans and carrots". It's | just a way of using the word that some native speakers have | used their whole lives and other native speakers find | jarring. | cryptonector wrote: | There is a tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, | and it has to do with the rate at which the language evolves. | Prescriptivism resists language evolution. Decriptivism | allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to | evolve it. | | 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. | Aerbil313 wrote: | > Prescriptivism resists language evolution. Decriptivism | allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to | evolve it. | | 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.) | bscphil wrote: | > Decriptivism allows the language to evolve as fast as | people wish to evolve it. | | 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. | canjobear wrote: | In principle prescriptivism is about slowing language | evolution, but in practice almost all of the prescriptive | rules that people talk about (including opposing "comprised | of") are not based in any historical usage pattern. The | prohibitions on ending a sentence with a preposition, | "less" before a count noun, etc. are all made up out of | thin air. | pklausler wrote: | He's not correcting the usage of people chatting on street | corners here. He's fixing bad usage in an encyclopedia. | | Good usage improves clarity. This is why editors have style | guides. | crazygringo wrote: | Except it's not bad usage. Even Merriam-Webster approves, | it's the second definition listed, and an additional usage | note validating it: | | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise | pklausler wrote: | "Bad usage" or not depends on one's style guide. The | better ones are better. | crazygringo wrote: | "Better ones are better" is meaningless because there's | no objective standard. What I think is better, you may | think is worse. All we can say about style guides is, | "different ones are different". They reflect the needs of | each publication. And Wikipedia's style guide takes no | stance in this case. | | It may not be your personal _preferred_ usage, but it | certainly isn 't _bad_ usage if a major American | dictionary approves. | bjourne wrote: | It depends on whether you presume language knowledge to be | descriptive or prescriptive. Neither view is right or wrong. | For example, I'm a native speaker of C, yet my syntax errors | are still errors. | spacephysics wrote: | Fully agree, same can be said about ever young generation's | slang. | | 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 | caconym_ wrote: | A "systematic" change in the meaning of a word or phrase | means that someone used it wrong once and enough people | followed them in their wrongness that it became the norm. | It's reasonable to say that once a new meaning has been taken | up by the majority in this way it's not wrong anymore, but | there is also a broad continuum between old usages and | majority uptake of new usages where some users of the | language in question may reasonably object to the latter. | | 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. | anigbrowl wrote: | That's nonsense, not all native speakers have equal verbal | fluency. Certainly new words or sentence constructions can be | coined for amusement or efficiency and may catch on at scale, | but if there were no such thing as correctness then there | wouldn't be any such concept as incoherence. | DANmode wrote: | This just made me realize the trend of using "myriad" in HN | comments died out. | captainmuon wrote: | I would say "comprises" in the active voice means | "encompasses". X not just contains Y, but X is made up of Y. | | 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. | SPBS wrote: | Interesting tidbits to know about the English language but I'm | not about to correct someone for that. | tvararu wrote: | The Romanian for "to use" is "a utiliza." Bilingual speakers | might find "utilize" more familiar and choose it as such. The | same might be true of other languages, and a possible | explanation for its popularity. | | In every other respect, "use" is indeed better. | make3 wrote: | comprises means whatever people use it for | npteljes wrote: | I agree with you. Frankly, utilize instead of use just sounds | finicking. As an engineer, I'd use it in a corporate powerpoint | that I make to impress management. These kind of things have no | place in Wikipedia. | alch- wrote: | > I'd use it | | I think you mean "leverage". | fauxpause_ wrote: | This post is comprised good points. | pastacacioepepe wrote: | > This post is comprised good points. | | This post comprises good points. | | This post consists of good points. | fauxpause_ wrote: | I only think it did in the past though. | pastacacioepepe wrote: | Then it should have been "This post comprised good | points." | | The "is" shouldn't be there. I might be wrong tho, I'm | not a native speaker. | ghaff wrote: | "This post is comprised of good points" is probably | technically grammatical but it's an awful sentence. "This | post made good points" works better. Better still would | be getting more specific. | ikekkdcjkfke wrote: | >This post comprises good points. >This post consists of | good points. | | There are items in the set that are good points. | | All the items in the set are good points. | gwd wrote: | > This post comprises 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. | jon-wood wrote: | Really? I'd say "this post makes many good points", "is | comprised of" isn't exactly in common usage these days. | Izkata wrote: | Also native speaker: I'd say a closer translation would | be "this post is based on many good points". Or "founded | on". | | 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. | smcl wrote: | The post isn't making anything, it's just sitting there | being read by us. The author, however, made some good | points in the post. | | 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 :) | [deleted] | kcb wrote: | Don't utilize comprised. | naniwaduni wrote: | The (expected) face-value meaning of "comprised of" is usually | best substituted by "part of": All Gaul comprises three parts | -> Three parts are comprised of all Gaul. | jfk13 wrote: | > All Gaul comprises three parts -> Three parts are comprised | of all Gaul. | | No, that doesn't work. | | You could, however, say "Gaul is comprised of three parts". | | https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/cw-comprise- | comprised... | Xorakios wrote: | Gaul should be ruled by Rome. There are no three parts. | naniwaduni wrote: | No, I know, I'm saying that the _expected_ , compositional, | interpretation of the phrase (a) exists and (b) is just a | slightly archaic passive, and it would still be perfectly | cromulent, just backward. | jameshart wrote: | Passive voice is formed with the word 'by' not 'of'. | | 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. | spondylosaurus wrote: | Thank you for taking a stand against the ever-encroaching | scourge of "utilize." That one bugs me almost as much as "in | order to" does. (Just say "to"!) | leephillips wrote: | "in order to" and "to" have different shades of meaning, and | sometimes different meanings entirely (although I guess | you're right that most instances of the first can be replaced | by the second). | | Think about | | "I walk to work." | | and | | "I walk in order to work." | | Close, but not _quite_ the same. | vajrabum wrote: | Interesting. If you look at Wiktionary or if you prefer, your | favorite etymology dictionary, the word utilize is descended | from Latin from the French word utiliser, via the Italian | utilizzare which got it from the Latin utilis. All of those | words mean to use. | | 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. | alasdair_ wrote: | >All of those words mean to use. | | "The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers" means | something different from "The teachers were unable to use the | new computers" | xdennis wrote: | Sorry, but what is the difference? "To utilize" is | literally defined as "to use". | alasdair_ wrote: | "utilize" - the teacher wasn't able to _use the computers | for the intended purpose of teaching_ the children. | | "use" - the teacher was unable to _operate_ the computer | at all (maybe they couldn 't use the mouse, for example). | denton-scratch wrote: | Nevertheless, "use" is a better word. Using longer words, | when shorter words are available that mean the same thing, | comes across as pompous or pretentious. | ghaff wrote: | They're not _quite_ the same thing. One example I see | online is using "utilize" to suggest that something is | used beyond its intended purpose. (I'm not sure I even | completely buy that.) But, in general, "use" is shorter and | sounds less jargony. | lipoid_ecole wrote: | Sometimes, the longer word has a connotation that more | clearly expresses our intention. Sometimes we want | Hemmingway and other times we want Faulkner. | Xorakios wrote: | Harrumph, but you are certainly not the last person to type | that you are incorrect and it all boils down to the | dialectic. | denton-scratch wrote: | "Dialectic" means something different from "dialect". I | have no idea which you meant. | emberfiend wrote: | Native, high-level speaker here: "comprised of" is not wrong. | You're entitled to your tastes of course, but you'll have a | richer understanding of the world if you include the shades in | your model. | Nifty3929 wrote: | >> Whenever I come across the word "utilize" in WP, I change it | to "use" | | Thank you so much for this. I do it to. Same with "incentivize" | -> "incent | | _stop the madness!_ | e12e wrote: | Truly? Webster's lists in part: | | > 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 | anigbrowl wrote: | _Whenever I come across the word "utilize" in WP, I change it | to "use"_ | | Not all heroes wear capes. I also chafe at that misuse so I'm | glad to read of your efforts. | devnullbrain wrote: | I feel the same way about s/use/utilize. It's like Joey on | Friends using a thesaurus. | | See also 'Due to the fact' -> 'because' | ape4 wrote: | I agree with you "at this point in time" (aka "now") | kitallis wrote: | This reminds me of the David Foster Wallace video on "puff | words" or genteelisms - https://youtu.be/52kiS1oV2k0 | arthurcolle wrote: | A true hero. I respect their efforts and wish them well. | | 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. | jayknight wrote: | A few years ago I went in a spree of fixing "could of" and | "should of", but I only did like 50 pages. | cesaref wrote: | I just hope that they don't wake up one morning and realise | they've wasted years of their life on some trivial crusade. | Actually, that could apply to a lot of us on HN I guess :) | DonHopkins wrote: | A life comprised of pedantry is a life well lived. | amoss wrote: | The reasoning in that essay comprises pedantry and poor | judgement. Language reflects usage. Accepting that a particular | usage has existed for hundreds of years, but claiming it is too | novel to be correct is quite bizarre. | Georgelemental wrote: | Language correctness should not be just about usage; ease of | understanding and aesthetics are also important. "Comprised of" | arguably fails on both counts. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-06 23:01 UTC)