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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”

#61

Post by emodendroket »

riffraff wrote: post #33
drewcoo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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!

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.

While we're on trivia, the etymology of this word is the Latin for "leaving the flock." The Japanese word 抜群, meaning "exceptional," has this exact same etymology except by way of Chinese rather than Latin.

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

#62

Post by emodendroket »

morsch wrote: post #38
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…

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…

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.

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

#63

Post by nwiswell »

arthurcolle wrote: post #50
ggm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

L'academie get to wear cool robes, pretend togas. Did the French just invent "Les Coupeurs de la Pierre"? Did they kill la Voiture électrique?

I wish I got to wear robes

What's stopping you?

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

#64

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

brookst wrote: post #53
gondaloof wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I miss being young. Ducks will far outnumber, eventually.

I'm not sure whether you're implying old people curse less or have less sex.

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

#65

Post by emodendroket »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #3

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 Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.

The long "S" was typically not used as the first letter, as I recall, but only mid-word.

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

#66

Post by emodendroket »

gsinclair wrote: post #16
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #3

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 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 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.

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

#67

Post by 112233 »

morsch wrote: post #38
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…

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…

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.

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

#68

Post by emodendroket »

rgoulter wrote: post #52
gsinclair wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

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.

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

#69

Post by jl6 »

joecool1029 wrote: post #26

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...

The cleansed version actually looks like an encyclopedia article, whereas the original just looks like a data dump.

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

#70

Post by tsimionescu »

rgoulter wrote: post #60
netsharc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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".

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