Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 735 posts

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

#341

Post by bluepod4 »

lolinder wrote: post #324
bluepod4 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#343

Post by crazygringo »

captainmuon wrote: post #268

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…

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.

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

#344

Post by Grustaf »

cogitoergofutuo wrote: post #307

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.

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.

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

#345

Post by samirillian »

tonnydourado wrote: post #311
samirillian wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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.

My main point is only that comparing this to newspeak is totally backwards.

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

#347

Post by bee_rider »

bombcar wrote: post #216
bee_rider wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The alphabet contains five vowels is a completely different statement from the alphabet is comprised of five vowels.

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.

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

#348

Post by KeplerBoy »

spencerchubb wrote: post #334
cogitoergofutuo wrote: post #307

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.

> 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.

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

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

#349

Post by hoosieree »

cogitoergofutuo wrote: post #307

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.

Surely you mean AT Machine?

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

#350

Post by Retric »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #332
lolinder wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "terrifi…

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

Semantic drift means it is no longer the wrong word.
Post reply on HN