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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”

#361

Post by s1artibartfast »

Retric wrote: post #350
s1artibartfast wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you call the intermediate stage where half of people have one definition and other half have a different one?

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

#362

Post by andrewshadura »

kazinator wrote: post #245

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 d…

You completely missed the point, which proves the work of this Wikipedian is very much necessary.

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

#363

Post by smcl »

jon-wood wrote: post #305
gwd wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Really? I’d say “this post makes many good points”, “is comprised of” isn’t exactly in common usage these days.

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 :)

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

#364

Post by woooooo »

dataflow wrote: post #352
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.

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 w…

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.

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

#365

Post by Nifty3929 »

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?

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

#366

Post by [deleted] »

jon-wood wrote: post #305
gwd wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Really? I’d say “this post makes many good points”, “is comprised of” isn’t exactly in common usage these days.

[deleted]

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

#367

Post by dataflow »

woooooo wrote: post #364
dataflow wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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.

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.

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

#368

Post by Nifty3929 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #214

"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"…

>> 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!

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

#369

Post by croisillon »

p-e-w wrote: post #10

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…

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

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

#370

Post by filmgirlcw »

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 passé, but this person really needs to touch grass.

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