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Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

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Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#291

Post by erikerikson »

George83728 wrote: post #243
rvnx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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

See also Kleenex

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#293

Post by devnullbrain »

Gimpei wrote: post #205

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.

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.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#294

Post by redmorphium »

jasomill wrote: post #156
redmorphium wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"I'll be staying at four hotels."

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..."

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#296

Post by devnullbrain »

LesZedCB wrote: post #59
pcthrowaway wrote: post #18

That whole page is comprised of the most pedantic arguments for what amounts to policing an evolving language

prescriptivists are a real bummer

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.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#297

Post by paulcole »

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.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#298

Post by devnullbrain »

bandyaboot wrote: post #114

> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. Maybe he can tackle “literally” once he is finished with “comprise”.

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!

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#299

Post by denton-scratch »

prepend wrote: post #188
tasuki wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trying to influence the English language for sure. Who are you to say they're punching above their weight?

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 disc…

> 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.

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