Can they be persuaded to invest time in autocorrecing learnings to lessons and de-verbalating words like "medalled" and "podiumed"
Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
21–30 of 735 posts
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#22The 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…
>> 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!
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#23This 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.
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#24This 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 Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.
I’m still waiting for autocorrect to stop changing “wellbeing” to “well-being”
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.
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#25Is 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?
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#26Wikipedia 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...
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#27This 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 Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.
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.
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.
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#28A 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.
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#29The 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.
Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
#30This 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 Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.
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.
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.